Qass 
Book 



1 



I 
i 

J 



1 



Marcus Tullius Cicero. 



Roman Life in the 
Days of Cicero 

By the 

Rev. ALFRED J. CHURCH, M.A. 

Author of " Stories from Homer " 
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




New York 
Dodd^ Mead and Company 
Publishers 



» « « « * t 



TO 

OCTAVIUS OGLE, 

IN REMEMBRANCE OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP. 
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. 



il 



CONTENTS 



OHAF. 

I. A ROMAN BOY . 
II. A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE 

III. IN THE DAYS OF THE DICTATOR. 

IV. A ROMAN MAGISTRATE . 
V. A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE . 

VI. COUNTRY LIFE • 
VII. A GREAT CONSPIRACY . 
VIII. CiESAR . . • • 

IX. POMPEY • • • • 

X. EXILE . . • • 

XI. A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 
XII. CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA 

XIII. A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE . 

XIV. ATTICUS . . • • 
XV. ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS i 



I 

( 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO . 


Frontispiece 


A ROMAN BOY , . . • 


i6 


A ROMAN SENATOR . • • 


. 48 


CAIUS JULIUS CiESAR 


. 151 


A BRITISH CHIEFTAIN 


. 163 


CNiEUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS 


. 177 


A VESTAL VIRGIN . . • ' 


207 


PORCIA AND MARCUS PORCIUS CATO . 


. 235 


MARCUS JUNIUS BRUTUS • 


241 


THE DYING GLADIATOR . . • 


. 273 


MARCUS ANTONIUS 


• 281 


OCTAVIUS CiESAR AUGUSTUS . 


. 289 



PREFACE. 



This book does not claim to be a life of Cicero 
or a history of the last days of the Roman 
Republic. Still less does it pretend to come 
into comparison with such a work as Bek- 
ker's Gallus, in which on a slender thread of 
narrative is hung a vast amount of facts re- 
lating to the social life of the Romans. I have 
tried to group round the central figure of Cicero 
various sketches of men and manners, and so 
to give my readers some idea of what life 
actually was in Rome, and the provinces of 
Rome, during the first six decades— to speak 
roughly— of the first century b.c. I speak of 
Cicero as the " central figure," not as judging 
him to be the most important man of the time, 



X 



PREFACE. 



but because it is from him, from his speeches and 
letters, that we chiefly derive the information 
of which I have here made use. Hence it follows 
that I give, not indeed a life of the great orator, 
but a sketch of his personality and career. I have 
been obliged also to trespass on the domain of 
history : speaking of Cicero, I was obliged to 
speak also of Caesar and of Pompey, of Cato and 
of Antony, and to give a narrative, which I have 
striven to make as brief as possible, of their 
military achievements and pcjitical action. I 
must apologize for seeming to speak dog- 
matically on some questions which have been 
much disputed. It would have been obviously 
inconsistent with the character of the book to 
give the opposing arguments ; and my only 
course was to state simply conclusions which I 
had done my best to make correct. 

I have to acknowledge my obligations to Mar- 
quardt's Privat-Leben der Romer, Mr. Capes' 
University Life in Ancient Athens, and Mr. 
Watson's Select Letters of Cicero. I have also 
made frequent use of Mr. Anthony Trollope's 



PREFACE. 



XI 



Life of Cicero, a work full of sound sense, 
though curiously deficient in scholarship. 

The publishers and myself hope that the 
illustrations, giving as there is good reason to 
believe they do the veritable likenesses of some 
of the chief actors in the scenes described, 
will have a special interest. It is not till we 
come down to comparatively recent times that 
we find art again lending the same aid to the 
understanding of history. 

Some apology should perhaps be made for 
retaining the popular title of one of the illus- 
trations. The learned are, we believe, agreed 
that the statue known as the " Dying Gladiator" 
does not represent a gladiator at all. Yet it 
seemed pedantic, in view of Byron's famous 
description, to let it appear under any other 
name. 

ALFRED CHURCH. 

Hadlev Green 
October 8, 1883. 



ROMAN LIFE 
IN THE DAYS OF CICERO. 



CHAPTER I. 

A ROMAN BOY. 

A Roman father's first duty to his boy, after 
lifting him up in his arms in token that he was 
a true son of the house, was to furnish him witn 
a first name out of the scanty Hst (just seven- 
teen) to which his choice was Umited. i his 
naming was done on the eighth day after birth, 
and was accompanied with some rehgious cere- 
monies, and with a feast to which kinsfolk 
were invited. Thus named he was enrolled in 
some family or state register. The next care was 
to protect him from the malignant influence of, 
the evil eye by hanging round his neck a gilded 
bulla, a round plate of metal. (The bulla was of 
leather if he was not of gentle birth.) This he 
wore till he assumed the dress of manhood. 



2 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



Then he laid it aside, possibly to assume it once 
more, if he attained the crowning honor to 
which a Roman could aspire, and was drawn in 
triumph up the slope of the Capitol. He was 
nursed by his mother, or, in any case, by a free- 
born woman. It was his mother that had ex- 
clusive charge of him for the first seven years 
of his life, and had much to say to the order- • 
ing of his life afterwards. For Roman mothers 
were not shut up like their sisters in Greece, 
but played no small part in affairs — witness the 
histories or legends (for it matters not for this 
purpose whether they are fact or fiction) of the 
Sabine wives, of Tullia, who stirred up her 
husband to seize a throne, or Veturia, who 
turned her son Coriolanus from his purpose of 
besieging Rome. At seven began the educa- 
tion which was to make him a citizen and 
a soldier. Swimming, riding, throwing the 
javelin developed his strength of body. He 
learned at the same time to be frugal, temperate 
in eating and drinking, modest and seemly in 
behavior, reverent to his elders, obedient to 
authority at home and abroad, and above all, 
pious towards the gods. If it was the duty of 



A ROMAN BOY. 



3 



the father to act as priest in some temple of the 
State (for the priests were not a class apart from 
their fellow-citizens), or to conduct the worship 
in some chapel of the family, the lad would act 
as camillus or acolyte. When the clients, the 
dependents of the house, trooped into the hall 
in the early morning hours to pay their respects 
to their patron, or to ask his advice and assist- 
ance in their affairs, the lad would stand by his 
father s chair and make acqaintance with his 
humble friends. When the hall was thrown 
open, and high festival was held, he would be 
present and hear the talk on public affairs or on 
past times. He would listen to and sometimes 
take part in the songs which celebrated great 
heroes. When the body of some famous soldier 
or statesman was carried outside the walls to be 
buried or burned, he would be taken to hear the 
oration pronounced over the bier. 

At one time it was the custom, if we may 
believe a quaint story which one of the Roman 
writers tells us, for the senators to introduce 
their young sons to the sittings of their as- 
sembly, very much in the same way as the boys 
of Westminster School are admitted to hear the 



4 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

debates in the Houses of Parliament. The story 
professes to show how it was that one of the 
families of the race of Papirius came to bear the 
name of Prcstextatus, i.e., clad in the pratexta 
(the garb of boyhood), and it runs thus : — " It 
was the custom in the early days of the Roman 
State that the senators should bring their young 
sons into the Senate to the end that they might 
learn in their early days how great affairs of the 
commonwealth were managed. " And that no 
harm should ensue to the city, it was strictly 
enjoined upon the lads that they should not say 
aught of the things which they had heard 
within the House. It happened on a day that 
the Senate, after long debate upon a certain 
matter, adjourned the thing to the morrow. 
Hereupon the son of a certain senator, named 
Papirius, was much importuned by his mother 
to tell the matter which had been thus painfully 
debated. And when the lad, remembering the 
command which had been laid upon him that he 
should be silent about such matters, refused to 
tell it, the woman besought him to speak more 
urgently, till at the last, being worn out iDy her 
importunities, he contrived this thing. ' The 



A ROMAN BO v. 



5 



Senate,' he said, ' debated whether something 
might not be done whereby there should be 
more harmony in families than is now seen to 
be ; and whether, should it be judged expedient 
to make any change, this should be to order that 
a husband should have many wives, or a wife 
should have more husbands than one.' Then 
the woman, being much disturbed by the thing 
which she had heard, hastened to all the 
matrons of her acquaintance, and stirred them 
up not to suffer any such thing. Thus it came 
to pass that the Senate, meeting the next day, 
were astonished beyond measure to see a great 
multitude of women gathered together at the 
doors, who besought them not to make any 
change ; or, if any, certainly not to permit that 
a man should have more wives than one. Then 
the young Papirius told the story how his 
mother had questioned him, and how he had 
devised this story to escape from her impor- 
tunity. Thereupon the Senate, judging that 
all boys might not have the same constancy 
and wit, and that the State might suffer dam- 
age from the revealing of things that had best 
be kept secret, made this law, that no sons of 



6 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DAYS OF CICERO. 



a senator should thereafter come into the 
House, save only this young Papirius, but that 
he should have the right to come so long as 
he should wear the prcstexta." 

While this general education was going on, 
the lad was receiving some definite teaching. 
He learned of course to read, to write, and to 
cypher. The elder Cato used to write in large 
characters for the benefit of his sons, portions 
of history, probably composed by himself or 
by his contemporary Fabius, surnamed the 
" Painter " (the author of a chronicle of Italy 
from the landing of ^Eneas down to the end of 
the Second Punic War). He was tempted to 
learn by playthings, which ingeniously combined 
instruction and amusement. Ivory letters — 
probably in earlier times a less costly material 
was used — were put into his hands, just as they 
are put into the hands of children now-a-days, 
that he might learn how to form words. As 
soon as reading was acquired, be began to learn 
by heart. " When we were boys," Cicero rep- 
resents himself as saying to his brother Quin- 
tus, in one of his Dialogues, " we used to learn 
the ' Twelve Tables.' " The " Twelve Tables" 



A ROMAN BOY. 



7 



were the laws which Appius of evil fame and 
his colleagues the decemvirs had arranged in 
a code. No one," he goes on to say, learns 
them now/' Books had become far more com- 
mon in the forty years which had passed be- 
tween Cicero s boyhood and the time at which 
he is supposed to be speaking ; and the tedi- 
ous lesson of his early days had given place to 
something more varied and interesting. 

Writing the boy learned by following with the 
pen (a sharp-pointed stylus of metal), forms of 
letters which had been engraved on tablets of 
wood. At first his hand was held and guided 
by the teacher. This was judged by the ex- 
perienced to be a better plan than allowing him 
to shape letters for himself on the wax-covered 
tablet. Of course parchment and paper were 
far too expensive materials to be used for exer- 
cises and copies. As books were rare and 
costly, dictation became a matter of much 
importanceo The boy wrote, in part at least, 
his own schoolbooks. Horace remembers with 
a shudder what he had himself written at the 
dictation of his schoolmaster, who was accus- 
tomed to enforce good writing and spelling 



8 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



with many blows. He never could reconcile 
himself to the early poets whose verse had 
furnished the matter of these lessons. 

Our Roman boy must have found arithmetic 
a more troublesome thing than the figures now 
in use (for which we cannot be too thankful to 
the Arabs their inventors) have made it. It is 
difficult to imagine how any thing like a long 
sum in multiplication or division could have 
been done with the Roman numerals, so cum- 
brous were they. The number, for instance, 
which we represent by the figures 89 would 
require for its expression no less than Jtine 
figures, LXXXVIIII. The boy was helped 
by using the fingers, the left hand being used 
to signify numbers below a hundred, and the 
right^'numbers above it. Sometimes his teacher 
would have a counting-board, on which units, 
tens, and hundreds would be represented by 
variously colored balls. The sums which he 
did were mostly of a practical kind. Here is 
the sample that Horace gives of an arithmetic 
lesson. " The Roman boys are taught to di- 
vide the penny by long calculations. ' If from 
five ounces be subtracted one, what is the re- 



A ROMAN BO V. 



9 



mainder ? ' At once you can answer, ' A third 
of a penny.' ' Good, you will be able to take 
care of your money. If an ounce be added 
what does it make ? ' * The half of a penny.' " 
While he was acquiring this knowledge he 
was also learning a language, the one language 
besides his own which to a Roman was worth 
knowing— Greek. Very possibly he had begun 
to pick it up in the nursery, where a Greek 
slave girl was to be found, just as the French 
do7ine or the German nursery-governess is 
among our own wealthier families. He cer- 
tainly began to acquire it when he reached the 
age at which his regular education was com- 
menced. Cato the Elder, though he made it a 
practice to teach his. own sons, had neverthe- 
less a Greek slave who was capable of under- 
taking the work, and who actually did teach, to 
the profit of his very frugal master, the sons 
of other nobles, i^milius, the conqueror of 
Macedonia, who was a few years younger than 
Cato, had as a tutor a Greek of some distinc- 
tion. While preparing the procession of his 
triumph he had sent to Athens for a scene- 
painter, as we should call him, who might make 



ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



pictures of conquered towns wherewith to illuii- 
trate his victories. He added to the commis- 
sion a stipulation that the artist should also be 
qualified to take the place of tutor. By good 
fortune the Athenians happened to have in 
stock, so to speak, exactly the man he wanted, 
one Metrodorus. Cicero had a Greek teacher 
in his own family, not for his son indeed, who 
was not born till later, but for his own benefit. 
This was one Diodotus, a Stoic philosopher. 
Cicero had been his pupil in his boyhood, and 
gave him a home till the day of his death, " I 
learned many things from him, logic especially." 
In old age he lost his sight. " Yet," says his 
pupil, " he devoted himself to study even more 
diligently than before ; he had books read to 
him night and day. These were studies which 
he could pursue without his eyes; but he 
also, and this seems almost incredible, taught 
geometry without them, instructing his learners 
whence and whither the line was to be drawn, 
and of what kind it was to be." It is interest- 
ing to know that when the old man died he left 
his benefactor about nine thousand pounds. 
Of course only wealthy Romans could com- 



A ROMAN BOY. 



II 



mand for their sons the services of such 
teachers as Diodotus ; but any well-to-do-house- 
hold contained a slave who had more or less 
acquaintance with Greek. In Cicero's time a 
century and more of conquests on the part of 
Rome over Greek and Greek-speaking com- 
munities had brought into Italian families a 
vast number of slaves who knew the Greek 
language, and something, often a good deal, of 
Greek literature. One of these would probably 
be set apart as the boy s attendant ; from him he 
would learn to speak and read a language, a 
knowledge of which was at least as common 
at Rome as is a knowledge of French among 
English gentlemen. 

If the Roman boy of whom we are speaking 
belonged to a very wealthy and distinguished 
family, he would probably receive his education 
at home. Commonly he would go to school. 
There were schools, girls' schools as well as 
boys' schools, at Rome in the days of the 
wicked Appius Claudius. The schoolmaster 
appears among the Etruscans in the story of 
Camillus, when the traitor, who offers to 
hand over to the Roman general the sons of 



12 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



the chief citizen of Falerii, is at his command 
scourged back into the town by his scholars. 
We find him again in the same story in the 
Latin town of Tusculum, where it is mentioned 
as one of the signs of a time of profound peace 
(Camillus had hurriedly marched against the 
town on a false report of its having revolted), 
that the hum of scholars at their lessons was 
heard in the market-place. At Rome, as time 
went on, and the Forum became more and more 
busy and noisy, the schools were removed to 
more suitable localities. Their appliances for 
teaching were improved and increased. Pos- 
sibly maps were added, certainly reading books. 
Homer was read, and, as we have seen, the old 
Latin play-writers, and, afterwards, Virgil. 
Horace threatens the book which willfully in- 
sists on going out into the world with this fate, 
that old age will find it in a far-off suburb 
teaching boys their letters. Some hundred 
years afterwards the prophecy was fulfilled. 
Juvenal tells us how the schoolboys stood each 
with a lamp in one hand and a well-thumbed 
Horace or sooty Virgil in the other. Quintilian, 
writing about the same time, goes into detail, 



A ROMAN BOY. ^3 



as becomes an old schoolmaster. " It is an 
admirable practice that the boy's reading should 
begin with Homer and Virgil. The tragic 
writers also are useful ; and there is much 
benefit to be got from the lyric poets also. 
But here you must make a selection not of 
authors only, but a part of authors." It is 
curious to find him banishing altogether a book 
that is, or certainly was, more extensively used 
in our schools than any other classic, the 
Heroides of Ovid. 

These, and such as these, then, are the books 
which our Roman boy would have to read. 
Composition would not be forgotten. " Let 
him take," says the author just quoted, " the 
fables of M^o^ and tell them in simple language, 
never rising above the ordinary level. Then 
let him pass on to a style less plain ; then, again, 
to bolder paraphrases, sometimes shortening, 
sometimes amplifying the original, but always 
following his sense." He also suggests the 
writing of themes and characters. One ex- 
ample he gives is this, " Was Crates the philoso- 
pher right when, having met an ignorant boy, he 
administered a beating to his teacher?" Many 



f4 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



subjects of these themes have been preserved 
Hannibal was naturally one often chosen. His 
passage of the Alps, and the question whether 
he should have advanced on the city immedi- 
ately after the battle of Cannae, were frequently 
discussed. Cicero mentions a subject of the 
speculative kind. It is forbidden to a stranger 
to mount the wall. A. mounts the wall, but 
only to help the citizens in repelling their ene- 
mies. Has A. broken the law? " 

To make these studies more interesting to 
the Roman boy, his schoolmaster called in the 
aid of emulation. I feel sure," says Quintilian, 

that the practice which I remember to have 
been employed by my own teachers was any 
thing but useless. They were accustomed to 
divide the boys into classes, and they set us to 
speak in the order of our powers ; every one 
taking his turn according to his proficiency. 
Our performances were duly estimated ; and 
prod gious were the struggles which we had 
for victory. To be the head of one's class was 
considered the most glorious thing conceivable^ 
But the decision was not made once for all. 
The next month brought the vanquished an 



A ROMAN BOY. 



Opportunity of renewing the contest. He who 
had been victorious in the first encounter was 
not led by success to relax his efforts, and a 
feeling of vexation impelled the vanquished to 
do away with the disgrace of defeat. This 
practice, I am sure, supplied a keener stimulus 
to learning than did all the exhortations of our 
teachers, the care of our tutors, and the wishes 
of our parents." Nor did the schoolmaster 
trust to emulation alone. The third choice of 
the famous Winchester line, " Either learn, or 
go : there is yet another choice— to be flogged," 
was liberally employed. Horace celebrates his 
old schoolmaster as a " man of many blows," 
and another distinguished pupil of this teacher, 
the Busby or Keate of antiquity, has specified 
the weapons which he employed, the ferule 
and the thong. The thong is the familiar 
" tawse " of schools north of the Border. The 
ferule was a name given both to the bamboo 
and to the yellow cane, which grew plentifully 
both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago 
and in Southern Italy, as notably at Canns in 
Apulia, where it gave a name to the scene of 
the great battle. The virga was also used, a 



i5 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



rod commonly of birch, a tree the educational 
use of which had been already discovered. The 
walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice 
of Eton is truly classical down to its details. 

As to the advantage of the practice opinions 
were divided. One enthusiastic advocate goes 
so far as to say that the Greek word for a cane 
signifies by derivation, the sharpener of the 
young'' {nartkeXy nearous thegein), but the best 
authorities were against it. Seneca is indignant 
with the savage who will butcher " a young 
learner because he hesitates at a word — a venial 
fault indeed, one would think, when we re- 
member what must have been the aspect of 
a Roman book, written as it was in capitals, 
almost without stops, and with little or no dis- 
tinction between the words. And Quintilian 
is equally decided, though he allows that flog- 
ging was an ''institution.'* 

As to holidays the practice of the Roman 
schools probably resembled that which prevails 
in the Scotch Univers^^es, though with a less 
magnificent length of .lon. Every one 
had a holiday on the 'days of Saturn '' (a 
festival beginning on the seventeenth of De- 



A ROMAN BOY. ^7 



cember), and the schoolboys had one of their 
own on the " days of Minerva," which fell in 
the latter half of March ; but the " long va- 
cation" was in the summer. Horace speaks 
of lads carrying their fees to school on the 
fifteenth of the month for eight months in the 
year (if this interpretation of a doubtful passage 
is correct). Perhaps as this was a country 
school the holidays were made longer than 
usual, to let the scholars take their part in the 
harvest, which as including the vintage would 
not be over till somewhat late in the autumn. 
We find Martial, however, imploring a school- 
master to remember that the heat of July was 
not favorable to learning, and suggesting that 
he should abdicate his seat till the fifteenth of 
October brought a season more convenient for 
study. Rome indeed was probably deserted 
in the later summer and autumn by the wealthier 
class, who were doubtless disposed to agree in 
the poet's remark, a remark to which the idlest 
schoolboy will forgive its Latin for the sake of 
its admirable sentiment : 

" Estate pueri si valent satis discunt." 
" In summer boys learn enough, if they keep their health." 



1 8 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



Something, perhaps, may be said of the 
teachers, into whose hands the boys of Rome 
were committed. We have a Httle book, of 
not more than twoscore pages in all, which 
gives us lives of illustrious schoolmasters ; " 
and from which we may glean a few facts. 
The first business of a schoolmaster was to 
teach grammar, and grammar Rome owed, as 
she owed most of her knowledge, to a Greek, a 
certain Crates, who coming as ambassador from 
one of the kings of Asia Minor, broke his leg 
while walking in the ill-paved streets of Rome, 
and occupied his leisure by giving lectures at his 
house. Most of the early teachers were Greeks. 
Catulus bought a Greek slave for somewhat 
more than fifteen hundred pounds, and giving 
him his freedom set him up as a schoolmaster ; 
another of the same nation received a salary of 
between three and four hundred pounds, his 
patron taking and probably making a consider- 
able profit out of the pupils' fees. Orbilius, the 
man of blows, was probably of Greek descent. 
He had been first a beadle, then a trumpeter, 
then a trooper in his youth, and came to Rome in 
the year in which Cicero was consul. He seems 



A ROMAN BOY. 



19 



to have been as severe on the parents of his 
pupils as he was in another way on the lads 
themselves, for he wrote a book in which he 
exposed their meanness and ingratitude. His 
troubles, however, did not prevent him living to 
the great age of one hundred and three. The 
author of the little book about schoolmasters 
had seen his statue in his native town. It was 
a marble figure, in a sitting posture, with two 
writing desks beside it. The favorite authors 
of Orbilius, who was of the old-fashioned school, 
were, as has been said, the early dramatists. 
Csecilius, a younger man, to whom Atticus the 
friend and correspondent of Cicero gave his 
freedom, lectured on Virgil, with whom, as he 
was intimate with one of Virgil's associates, 
he probably had some acquaintance. A 
certain Flaccus had the credit of having first 
invented prizes. He used to pit lads of equal 
age against each other, supplying not only 
a subject on which to write, but a prize for 
the victor. This was commonly some hand- 
some or rare old book, Augustus made him 
tutor to his grandsons, giving him a salary of 
eight hundred pounds per annum. Twenty 



ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



years later, a fashionable schoolmaster is said 
to have made between three and four thousands. 

These schoolmasters were also sometimes 
teachers of eloquence, leckiring to men. One 
Gnipho, for instance, is mentioned among them, 
as having held his classes in the house of Julius 
Ceesar (Cffisar was left an orphan at fifteen) ; 
and afterwards, when his distinguished pupil 
was grown up, in his own. But Cicero, when 
he was prstor, and at the very height of his 
fame, is said to have attended his lectures. 
This was the year in which he delivered the 
very finest of his non-political speeches, his 
defence of Cluentius. He must have been a 
very clever teacher from whom so great an 
orator hoped to learn something. 

These teachers of eloquence were what we 
may call the "Professors" of Rome. A lad 
had commonly " finished his education " when 
he put on the " man's gown ; " but if he thought 
of political life, of becoming a statesman, and 
taking ofifice in the commonwealth, he had 
much yet to learn. He had to make himself 
a lawyer and an orator. Law he learned by 
attaching himself, by becoming the pupil, as 



A ROMAN BOY. 



21 



we should say, of some great man that was 
famed for his knowledge. Cicero relates to us 
his own experience : " My father introduced 
me to the Augur Scsvola ; and the result was 
that, as far as possible and permissible, I never 
left the old man's side. Thus I committed to 
memory many a learned argument of his, many 
a terse and clever maxim, while I sought to 
add to my own knowledge from his stores of 
special learning. When the Augur died I 
betook myself to the Pontiff of the same name 
and family." Elsewhere we have a picture of 
this second Scsvola and his pupils. " Though 
he did not undertake to give instruction to any 
one, yet he practically taught those who were 
anxious to listen to him by allowing them to 
hear his answers to those who consulted him." 
These consultations took place either in the 
Forum or at his own house. In the Forum 
the great lawyer indicated that clients were at 
liberty to approach by walking across the open 
space from corner to corner. The train of 
young Romans would then follow his steps, 
just as the students follow the physician or 
the surgeon through the wards of a hospital 



2 2 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



When he gave audience at home they would 
stand by his chair. It must be remembered 
that the great man took no payment either 
from cHent or from pupil. 

But the young Roman had not only to learn 
law, he must also learn how to speak — learn, as 
far as such a thing can be learned, how to be 
eloquent What we in this country call the 
career of the public man was there called the 
career of the orator. With us it is much a 
matter of chance whether a man can speak or 
not. We have had statesmen who wielded all 
the power that one man ever can wield in this 
country who had no sort of eloquence. We 
have had others who had this gift in the high- 
est degree, but never reached even one of the 
lower offices in the government. Sometimes 
a young politician will go to a professional 
teacher to get cured of some defect or trick of 
speech ; but that such teaching is part of the 
necessary training of a statesman is an idea 
quite strange to us. A Roman received it as a 
matter of course. Of course, like other things 
at Rome, it made its way but slowly. Just 
before the middle of the second century b.c 



A ROMAN BOY. 



23 



the Senate resolved : " Seeing that mention 
has been made of certain philosophers and 
rhetoricians, let Pomponius the prsetor see to 
it, as he shall hold it to be for the public good, 
and for his own honor, that none such be 
found at Rome." Early in the first century 
the censors issued an edict forbidding certain 
Latin rhetoricians to teach. One of these 
censors was the great orator Crassus, greatest 
of all the predecessors of Cicero. Cicero puts 
into his mouth an apology for this proceeding : 
"I was not actuated by any hostility to 
learning or culture. These Latin rhetoricians 
were mere ignorant pretenders, inefficient imi- 
tators of their Greek rivals, from whom the 
Roman youth were not likely to learn any thing 
but impudence." In spite of the censors, how- 
ever, and in spite of the fashionable belief in 
Rome that what was Greek must be far better 
than what was of native growth, the Latin 
teachers rose into favor. " I remember," says 
Cicero, "when we were boys, one Lucius 
Plotinus, who was the first to teach eloquence 
in Latin ; how, when the studious youth of the 
capital crowded to hear him it vexed me much, 



ROMA]>J LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



that I was not permitted to attend him. I was 
checked, however, by the opinion of learned 
men, who held that in this matter the abilities 
of the young were more profitably nourished 
by exercises in Greek." We are reminded of 
our own Doctor Johnson, who declared that 
he would not disgrace the walls of Westminster 
Abbey by an epitaph in English. 

The chief part of the instruction which these 
teachers gave was to propose imaginary cases 
involving some legal difficulty for their pupils 
to discuss. One or two of these cases may be 
given. 

One day in summer a party of young men 
from Rome made an excursion to Ostia, and 
coming down to the seashore found there 
some fishermen who were about to draw in a 
net. With these they made a bargain that 
they should have the draught for a certain sum. 
The money was paid. When the net was 
drawn up no fish were found in it, but a 
hamper sewn with thread of gold. The buyers 
allege this to be theirs as the draught of the 
net. The fishermen claim it as not being fish. 
To whom did it belong ? 



A ROMAN BO Y. 



25 



Certain slave-dealers, landing a cargo oi 
slaves at Brundisium, and having with them a 
very beautiful boy of great value, fearing lest 
the custom-house officers should lay hands 
upon him, put upon him the bulla and the 
purple-edged robe that free-born lads were 
wont to wear. The deceit was not discovered. 
But when they came to Rome, and the matter 
was talked of, it was maintained that the boy 
was really free, seeing that it was his master 
who of his own free will had given him the 
token of freedom. 

I shall conclude this chapter with a very 
pretty picture, which a Roman poet draws of 
the life which he led with his teacher in the 
days when he was first entering upon man- 
hood. " When first my timid steps lost the 
guardianship of the purple stripe, and the bulla 
of the boy was hung up for offering to the 
quaint household gods ; when flattering com- 
rades came about me, and I might cast my eyes 
without rebuke over the whole busy street un- 
der the shelter of the yet unsullied gown ; in 
the days when the path is doubtful, and the 
wanderer knowing naught of life comes with 



26 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



bewildered soul to the many-branching roads- 
then I made myself your adopted child. You 
took at once into the bosom of another 
Socrates my tender years ; your rule, applied 
with skillful disguise, straightens each perverse 
habit ; nature is molded by reason, and strug- 
gles to be subdued, and assumes under your 
hands its plastic lineaments. Ay, well I mind 
how I would wear away long summer suns 
with you, and pluck with you the bloom of 
night s first hours. One work we had, one 
certain time for rest, and at one modest table 
unbent from sterner thoughts.'' 

It accords with this charming picture to be 
told that the pupil, dying in youth, left his 
property to his old tutor, and that the latter 
handed it over to the kinsfolk of the deceased, 
keeping for himself the books only. 



CHAPTER II. 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE. 

In the last chapter we had no particular 
"Roman Boy" in view ; but our "Roman 
Undergraduate" will be a real person, Cicero's 
son. It will be interesting to trace the notices 
which we find of him in his father's letters and 
books. " You will be glad to hear," he writes , 
in one of his earliest letters to Atticus, " that 
a little son has been born to me, and that Ter- 
entia is doing well." From time to time we 
hear of him, and always spoken of in terms of 
the tenderest affection. He is his " honey- 
sweet Cicero," his " little philosopher." When 
the father is in exile the son's name is put on 
the address of his letters along with those of 
his mother and sister. His prospects are the 
subject of most anxious thought. Terentia, 
who had a considerable fortune of her own, 



28 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



proposes to sell an estate. Pray think," he 
writes, ''what will happen to us. If the same 
ill fortune shall continue to pursue us, what 
will happen to our unhappy boy? I cannot 
write any more. My tears fairly overpower 
me ; I should be sorry to make you as sad as 
myself. I will say so much. If my friends do 
their duty by me, I shall not want for money ; 
if they do not, your means will not save me. 
I do implore you, by all our troubles, do 
not ruin the poor lad. Indeed he is ruined 
enough already. If he has only something to 
keep him from want, then modest merit and 
moderate good fortune will give him all he 
wants." 

Appointed to the government of Cilicia, 
Cicero takes his son with him into the province. 
When he starts on his campaign against the 
mountain tribes, the boy and his cousin, young 
Quintus, are sent to the court of Deiotarus, one 
of the native princes of Galatia. The young 
Ciceros,'' he writes to Atticus, '• are with 
Deiotarus. If need be, they will be taken to 
Rhodes." Atticus, it may be mentioned, was 
uncle to Quintus, and might be anxious about 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE. 29 



him. The need was probably the case of the 
old prince himself marching to Cicero's help. 
This he had promised to do, but the campaign 
was finished without him. This was in the 
year 51 B.C., and Marcus was nearly fourteen 
years old, his cousin being his senior by about 
two years. They are very fond of each other," 
writes Cicero ; they learn, they amuse them« 
selves together, but one wants the rein, the 
other the spur." (Doubtless the latter is the 
writer s son.) I am very fond of Dionysius 
their teacher : the lads say that he is apt to get 
furiously angry. But a more learned and more 
blameless man there does not live." A year or 
so afterwards he seems to have thought less 
favorably of him. I let him go reluctantly 
vv^hen I thought of him as the tutor of the two 
lads, but quite willingly as an ungrateful fellow." 
In B.C. 49, when the lad was about half 
through his sixteenth year, Cicero gave him 
his toga'' To take the togay that is? to exchange 
the gown of the boy with its stripe of purple 
for the plain white gown of the citizen, marked 
the beginning of independence (though indeed a 
Roman's son was even in mature manhoodunder 



30 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



his father s control). The ceremony took place 
at Arpinum, much to the delight of the inhabi- 
tants, who felt of course the greatest pride and 
interest in their famous fellow-townsman. But 
it was a sad time. There and every where as 
I journeyed I saw sorrow and dismay. The 
prospect of this vast trouble is sad indeed.'' 
The vast trouble " was the civil war between 
C^sar and Pompey. This indeed had already 
broken out. While Cicero was entertaining 
his kinsfolk and friends at Arpinum, Pompey 
was preparing to fly from Italy. The war 
was probably not an unmixed evil to a lad who 
was just beginning to think himself a man. 
He hastened across the Adriatic to join his 
father s friend, and was appointed to the com- 
mand of a squadron of auxiliary cavalry. His 
maneuvers were probably assisted by some 
veteran subordinate ; but his seat on horse-- 
back, his skill with the javelin, and his general^ 
soldierly qualities were highly praised both by 
his chief and by his comrades. After the defeat 
at Pharsalia he waited with his father at Brun- 
disium till a kind letter from Caesar assured 
him of pardon. In B.C. 46 he was made aedile 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE. 



at Arpinum, his cousin being appointed at the 
same time. The next year he would have 
gladly resumed his military career. Fighting 
was going on in Spain, where the sons of 
Pompey were holding out against the forces 
of C^sar ; and the young Cicero, who was 
probably not very particular on which side he 
drew his sword, was ready to take service 
against the son of his old general. Neither 
the cause nor the career pleased the father, and 
the son swish was overruled, just as an English 
lad has sometimes to give up the unremunera- 
tive profession of arms, when there is a living 
in the family, or an opening in a bank, or a 
promising connection with a firm of solicitors. 
It was settled that he should take up his resi- 
dence at Athens, which was then the university 
of Rome, not indeed exactly in the sense in 
which Oxford and Cambridge are the univer- 
sities of England, but still a place of liberal 
culture, where the sons of wealthy Roman fami- 
lies were accustomed to complete their educa- 
tion. Four-and-twenty years before the father 
had paid a long visit to the city, partly for 
study's sake. In those days," he writes, I 



32 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



was emaciated and feeble to a degree ; my 
neck was long and thin ; a habit of body and 
a figure that are thought to indicate much 
danger to life, if aggravated by a laborious 
profession and constant straining of the voice. 
My friends thought the more of this, because 
in those days I was accustomed to deliver all 
my speeches without any relaxation of effort, 
without any variety, at the very top of my 
voice, and with most abundant gesticulation. 
At first, when friends and physicians advised 
me to abandon advocacy for a while, I felt that 
I would sooner run any risk than relinquish 
the hope of oratorical distinction. Afterwards 
I reflected that by learning to moderate and 
regulate my voice, and changing my style of 
speaking, I might both avert the danger that 
threatened my health and also acquire a more 
self-controlled manner. It was a resolve to 
break through the habits I had formed that 
induced me to travel to the East. I had 
practiced for two years, and my name had be- 
come well known when I left Rome. Coming 
to Athens I spent six months with Antiochus, 
the most distinguished and learned philosopher 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE. 33 



of the Old Academy, than whom there was no 
wiser or more famous teacher. At the same 
time I practiced myself diligently under the care 
of Demetrius Syrus, an old and not undistin- 
guished master of eloquence." To Athens, 
then, Cicero always looked back with affection. 
He hears, for instance, that Appius is going 
to build a portico at Eleusis. " Will you think 
me a fool," he writes to Atticus, " if I do the 
same at the Academy ? ' I think so,' you will 
say. But I love Athens, the very place, much ; 
and I shall be glad to have some memorial of 
me there." 

The new undergraduate, as we should call 
him, was to have a liberal allowance. " He 
shall have as much as Publilius, as much as 
Lentulus the Flamen, allow their sons." It 
would be interesting to know the amount, but 
unhappily this cannot be recovered. All that 
we know is that the richest young men in 
Rome were not to have more. " I will guar- 
antee," writes this liberal father, " that none 
of the three young men [whom he names] who, 
I hear, will be at Athens at the same time 
shall live at more expense than he will be 



34 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



able to do on those rents." These ''rents" 
were the incomings from certain properties at 
Rome. Only," he adds, I do not think he 
will want a horse." 

We know something of the university build- 
ings, so to speak, which the young Cicero found 
at Athenso " To seek for truth among the 
groves of Academus " is the phrase by which a 
more famous contemporary, the poet Horace, 
describes his studies at Athens. He probably 
uses it generally to express philosophical pur- 
suits ; taken strictly it would mean that he 
attached himself to the sage whose pride it was 
to be the successor of Plato. Academus was a 
local hero, connected with the legend of Theseus 
and Helen. Near his grove, or sacred inclosure, 
v/hich adjoined the road to Eleusis, Plato had 
bought a garden. It was but a small spot, 
purchased for a sum which may be represented 
by about three or four hundred pounds of our 
money, but it had been enlarged by the liber- 
ality of successive benefactors. This then was 
one famous lecture-room. Another was the 
Lyceum. Here Aristotle had taught, and after 
Aristotle, Theophrastus, and after him, a long 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE. 



35 



succession of thinkers of the same school. A 
third institution of the same kind was the gar- 
den in which Epicurus had assembled his dis- 
ciples, and which he bequeathed to trustees for 
their benefit and the benefit of their successors 
for all time. 

To a Roman of the nobler sort these gar- 
dens and buildings must have been as holy 
places. It was with these rather than with the 
temples of gods that he connected what there 
was of goodness and purity in his life. To 
worship Jupiter or Romulus did not make him 
a better man, though it might be his necessary 
duty as a citizen ; his real religion, as we under- 
stand it, was his reverence for Plato or Zeno. 
Athens to him was not only what Athens, but 
what the Holy Land is to us. Cicero describes 
something of this feeling in the following pas- 
sage : We had been listening to Antiochus (a 
teacher of the Academics) in the school called 
the Ptolemseus, where he was wont to lecture. 
Marcus Piso was with me, and my brother 
Quintus, and Atticus, and Lucius Cicero, by re- 
lationship a cousin, in affection a brother. We 
agreed among ourselves to finish our afternoon 



36 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



walk in the Academy, chiefly because that place 
was sure not to be crowded at that hour. At 
the proper time we met at Piso*s house ; thence, 
occupied with varied talk, we traversed the six 
furlongs that lie between the Double Gate and 
the Academy ; and entering the walls which 
can give such good reason for their fame, found 
there the solitude which we sought. ' Is it,' 
said Piso, ' by some natural instinct or through 
some delusion that when we see the very spots 
where famous men have lived we are far more 
touched than when we hear of the things that 
they have done, or read something that they 
have written ? It is thus that I am affected at 
this moment I think of Plato, who was, we 
are told, the first who lectured in this place ; 
his little garden which lies there close at hand 
seems not only to remind me of him, but actually 
to bring him up before my eyes. Here spake 
Speusippus, here Xenocrates, here his disciple 
Polemo — to Polemo indeed belonged this seat 
which we have before us.' " This was the Polemo 
who had been converted, as we should say, when, 
bursting in after a night of revel upon a lecture 
in which Xenocrates was discoursing of temper- 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE. 



37 



ance, he listened to such purpose that from that 
moment he became a changed man. Then 
Atticus describes how he found the same charms 
of association in the garden which had belonged 
to his own master, Epicurus ; while Quintus 
Cicero supplies what we should call the classical 
element by speaking of Sophocles and the grove 
of Colonus, still musical, it seems, with the same 
song of the nightingale which had charmed the 
ear of the poet more than three centuries before. 

One or other, perhaps more than one, of these 
famous places the young Cicero frequented. 
He probably witnessed, he possibly took part 
(for strangers were admitted to membership) 
in, the celebrations with which the college of 
Athenian youths (Ephebi) commemorated the 
glories of their city, the procession to the tomibs 
of those who died at Marathon, and the boat- 
races in the Bay of Salamis. That he gave his 
father some trouble is only too certain. His 
private tutor in rhetoric, as we should call him, 
was a certain Gorgias, a man of ability, and a 
writer of some note, but a worthless and profli- 
gate fellow. Cicero peremptorily ordered his son 
to dismiss him ; and the young man seems to 



38 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO^ 



have obeyed and reformed. We may hope at 
least that the repentance which he expresses for 
his misdoings in a letter to Tiro, his father s 
freed-man, v/as genuine. This is his picture of 
hisHfe in the days of repentance and soberness : 
I am on terms of the closest intimacy with Cra- 
tippus, living with him more as a son than as a 
pupil Not only do I hear his lectures with de- 
light, but I am greatly taken with the geniality 
which is peculiar to the man. I spend whole days 
with him, and often no small part of the night ; 
for I beg him to dine with me as often as he 
can. This has become so habitual with him 
that he often looks in upon us at dinner when 
we are not expecting him ; he lays aside the 
sternness of the philosopher and jokes with us 
in the pleasantest fashion. As for Bruttius, he 
never leaves me ; frugal and strict as is his 
life, he is yet a most delightful companion. 
For we do not entirely banish mirth from our 
daily studies in philology. I have hired a 
lodging for him close by ; and do my best to 
help his poverty out of my own narrow means. 
I have begun to practice Greek declamation 
with Cassius, and wish to have a Latin course 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE, 



39 



with Bruttius. My friends and daily com- 
panions are the pupils whom Cratippus brought 
with him from Mitylene, v/ell-read m.en, of whom 
he highly approves. I also see much of Epi- 
crates, who is the first man at Athens." After 
some pleasant words to Tiro, who had bought a 
farm, and whom he expects to find turned into 
a farmer, bringing stores, holding consultations 
with his bailiff, and putting by fruit-seeds in his 
pocket from dessert, he says, I should be glad 
if you would send me as quickly as possible 
a copyist, a Greek by preference. I have to 
spend much pains on writing out my notes." 

A short time before one of Cicero's friends 
had sent a satisfactory report of the young 
man's behavior to his father. I found your 
son devoted to the most laudable studies and 
enjoying an excellent reputation for steadiness. 
Don't fancy, my dear Cicero, that I say this 
to please you ; there is not in Athens a more 
lovable young man than your son, nor one 
more devoted to those high pursuits in which 
you would have him interested." 

Among the contemporaries of the young 
Cicero was, as has been said, the poet Horace, 



40 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



His had been a more studious boyhood. He 
had not been taken away from his books to 
serve as a cavalry officer under Pompey. In 
him accordingly we see the regular course of 
the studies of a Roman lad. " It was my lot," 
he says, " to be bred up at Rome, and to be 
taught how much the wrath of Achilles harmed 
the Greeks. In other words, he had read his 
Homer, just as an English boy reads him at 
Eton or Harrow. " Kind Athens," he goes on, 
" added a little more learning, to the end that I 
might be able to distinguish right from wrong, 
and to seek for truth amongst the groves of 
Academus." And just in the same way the 
English youth goes on to read philosophy at 
Oxford. 

The studies of the two young men were 
interrupted by the same cause, the civil war 
which followed the death of Cssar. They 
took service with Brutus, both having the 
same rank, that of military tribune, a command 
answering more or less nearly to that of colonel 
in our own army. It was, however, mainly an 
ornamental rank, being bestowed sometimes by 
favor of the general in command, sometimes 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE. 41 



by a popular vote. The young Cicero indeed 
had already served, and he now distinguished 
himself greatly, winning some considerable suc- 
cesses in the command of the cavalry which 
Brutus afterwards gave him. When the hopes 
of the party were crushed at Phillippi, he 
joined the younger Pompey in Sicily; but 
took an opportunity of an amnesty which was 
offered four years afterwards to return to 
Rome. Here he must have found his old 
fellow-student, who had also reconciled himself 
to the victorious party. He was made one of 
the college of augurs, and also a commissioner 
of the mint, and in B.C. 30 he had the honour of 
sharing the consulship with Augustus himself. 
It was to him that the dispatch announcing the 
final defeat and death of Antony was delivered ; 
and it fell to him to execute the decree which 
ordered the destruction of all the statues of the 
fallen chief. " Then," says Plutarch, "by the 
ordering of heaven the punishment of Antony 
was inflicted at last by the house of Cicero." 
His time of office ended, he went as Governor 
to Asia, or, according to some accounts, to 
Syria ; and thus disappears from our view. 



42 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



Pliny the Elder tells us that he was a drunkard, 
sarcastically observing that he sought to avenge 
himself on Antony by robbing him of the rep- 
utation which he had before enjoyed of being 
the hardest drinker of the time. As the story 
which he tells of the younger Cicero being 
able to swallow twelve pints of wine at a draught 
is clearly incredible, perhaps we may disbelieve 
the whole, and with it the other anecdote, that 
he threw a cup at the head of Marcus Agrip« 
pa, son-in-law to the Emperor, and after him 
the greatest man in Rome. 



CHAPTER III. 



IN THE DAYS OF THE DICTATOR. 

In November 82 b.c, Cornelius Sulla became 
absolute master of Rome. It is not part of my 
purpose to give a history of this man. He was 
a great soldier who had won victories in Africa 
and Asia over the enemies of Rome, and in 
Italy itself over the " allies," as they were 
called, that is the Italian nations, who at 
various times had made treaties with Rome, 
and who in the early part of the first century 
B.C. rebelled against her, thinking that they 
were robbed of the rights and privileges which 
belonged to them. And he was the leader of 
the party of the nobles, just as Marius was the 
leader of the party of the people. Once before 
he had made himself supreme in the capital ; 
and then he had used his power with moder- 
ation. But he was called away to carry on 
the war in Asia against Mithridates, the great 



44 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



King of Pontus ; and his enemies had got the 
upper hand, and had used the opportunity most 
cruelly. A terrible list of victims, called the 

proscription,'' because it was posted up in the 
forum, was prepared. Fifty senators and a 
thousand knights (peers and gentlemen we 
should call them) were put to death, almost all 
of them without any kind of trial. Sulla him- 
self was outlawed. But he had an army which 
he had led to victory and had enriched with 
prize-money, and which was entirely devoted to 
him ; and he was not inclined to let his enemies 
triumph. He hastened back to Italy, and 
landed in the spring of 83. In the November 
of the following year, just outside the walls 
of Rome, was fought the final battle of the war. 

The opposing army was absolutely destroyed 
and Sulla had every thing at his mercy. He 
waited for a few days outside the city till the 
Senate had passed a decree giving him absolute 
power to change the law^s, to fill the offices of 
State, and to deal with the lives and properties 
of citizens as it might please him. This done, 
he entered Rome. Then came another pro- 
scription. The chief of his enemies, Marius. 



IN THE DA YS OF THE DICTATOR. 45 



was gone. He had died, tormented it was said 
by remorse, seventeen days after he had reached 
the crowning glory, promised him in his youth 
by an oracle, and had been made consul for the 
seventh time. The conqueror had to content 
himself with the same vengeance that Charles II. 
in our own country exacted from the remains 
of Cromwell. The ashes of Marius were 
taken out of his tomb on the Flaminian Way, 
the great North Road of Rome, and were 
thrown into the Anio. But many of his friends 
and partisans survived, and these were slaugh- 
tered without mercy. Eighty names were put 
on the fatal list on the first day, two hundred 
and twenty on the second, and as many more 
on the third. With the deaths of many of these 
victims politics had nothing to do. Sulla 
allowed his friends and favorites to put mto 
the list the names of men against whom they 
happened to bear a grudge, or whose property 
they coveted. No one knew who might be the 
next to fall. Even Sulla's own partisans were 
alarmed. A young senator, Caius Metellus, 
one of a family which was strongly attached to 
Sulla and with which he was connected by 



46 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



marriage, had the courage to ask him in public 
when there would be an end to this terrible state 
of things. We do not beg you," he said, to 
remit the punishment of those whom you have 
made up your mind to remove ; we do beg you 
to do av/ay with the anxiety of those whom you 
have resolved to spare/' I am not yet certain," 
answered Sulla, whom I shall spare." Then 
at least," said Metellus, '^you can tell us whom 
you mean to punish." That I will do," replied 
the tyrant. It was indeed a terrible time that 
followed. Plutarch thus describes it : He 
denounced against any who might shelter or 
save the life of a proscribed person the punish- 
ment of death for his humanity. He made no 
exemption for mother, or son, or parent. The 
murderers received a payment of two talents 
(about /470) for each victim ; it was paid to a 
slave who killed his master, to a son who killed 
his father. The most monstrous thing of all, it 
was thought, was that the sons and grandsons 
of the proscribed were declared to be legally 
infamous and that their property was confis- 
cated. Nor was it only in Rome but in all the 
cities of Italy that the proscription was carried 



IN THE DA YS OF THE DICTA TOR. 47 



out. There was not a single temple, not a house 
but was polluted with blood. Husbands were 
slaughtered in the arrns of their wives, and sons 
in the arms of their mothers. And the number 
of those who fell victims to anger and hatred 
was but small in comparison with the number 
who were put out of the way for the sake of 
their property. The murderers might well have 
said : ' His fine mansion has been the death of 
this man ; or his gardens, or his baths.' Quintus 
Aurelius, a peaceable citizen, who had had only 
this share in the late civil troubles, that he had 
felt for the misfortunes of others, coming into 
the forum, read the list of the proscribed and 
found in it his own name. ' Unfortunate that I 
am,' he said, ' it is my farm at Alba that has 
been my ruin ; ' and he had not gone many 
steps before he was cut down by a man that 
was following him. Lucius Catiline's conduct 
was. especially wicked. He had murdered his 
own brother. This was before the proscription 
began. He went to Sulla and begged that the 
name might be put in the list as if the man 
were still alive ; and it was so put. His gratitude 
to Sulla was shown by his killing one MariuSj 



48 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



who belonged to the opposite faction, and bring- 
ing his head to Sulla as he sat in the forum. 
(This Marius was a kinsman of the great demo- 
cratic leader, and was one of the most popular 
men in Rome.) This done, he washed his hands 
in the holy water-basin of the temple of Apollo." 

Forty senators and sixteen hundred knights, 
and more than as many men of obscure station, 
are said to have perished. At last, on the first 
of June, 8 1, the list was closed. Still the reign 
of terror was not yet at an end, as the strange 
story which I shall now relate will amply prove. 
To look into the details of a particular case 
makes us better able to imagine what it really 
was to live at Rome in the days of the Dictator 
than to read many pages of general description. 
The story is all the more impressive because 
the events happened after order had been 
restored and things were supposed to be pro- 
ceeding in their regular course. 

The proscription came to an end, as has 
been said, in the early summer of 8i. In the 
autumn of the same year a certain Sextus 
Roscius was murdered in the streets of Rome 
as he was returning home from dinner. 



\ 



i 




JN THE DA YS OF THE DICTATOR. 49 



Roscius was a native of Ameria, a little town 
of Etruria, between fifty and sixty miles north 
of Rome. He was a wealthy man, possessed, 
it would seem, of some taste and culture, and 
an intimate friend of some of the noblest 
families at Rome. In politics he belonged to 
the party of Sulla, to which indeed in its less 
prosperous days he had rendered good service. 
Since its restoration to power he had lived 
much at Rome, evidently considering himself, 
as indeed he had the right to do, to be perfectly 
safe from any danger of proscription. But he 
was wealthy, and he had among his own kins- 
folk enemies who desired and who would profit 
by his death. One of these, a certain Titus 
Roscius, surnamed Magnus, was at the time of 
the murder residing at Rome ; the other, who 
was known as Capito, was at home at Ameria. 
The murder was committed about seven o'clock 
in the evening. A messenger immediately left 
Rome with the news, and made such haste to 
Ameria that he reached the place before dawn 
the next day. Strangely enough he went to 
the house not of the murdered man's son, who 
was living at Ameria in charge of his farms, 



so ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

' ' .11. — ■ ' * . 

but of the hostile kinsman Capito. Three 
days afterwards Capito and Magnus made 
their way to the camp of Sulla (he was be- 
sieging Volaterrae, another Etrurian town). 
They had an interview with one Chrysogonus, 
a Greek freedman of the Dictator, and ex- 
plained to him how rich a prey they could 
secure if he would only help them. The 
deceased, it seems, had left a large sum of 
money and thirteen valuable farms, nearly all 
of them running down to the Tiber. And the 
son, the lawful heir, could easily be got out of 
the way. Roscius was a well-known and a 
popular man, yet no outcry had followed his 
disappearance. With the son, a simple farmer, 
ignorant of affairs, and wholly unknown to 
Rome, it would be easy to deal. Ultimately 
the three entered into alliance. The proscrip^ 
tion was to be revived, so to speak, to take in 
this particular case, and the name of Roscius 
was included in the list of the condemned. All 
his wealth was treated as the property of the 
proscribed, and was sold by auction. It was 
purchased by Chrysogonus. The real value 
was between fifty and sixty thousand pounds. 



IN THE DA YS OF THE DICTATOR. 51 



The price paid was something less than 
eighteen pounds. Three of the finest farms 
were at once handed over to Capito as his 
share of the spoil. Magnus acted as the agent 
of Chrysogonus for the remainder. He took 
possession of the house in which Roscius the 
younger was living, laid his hands on all its 
contents, among which was a considerable sum 
of money, and drove out the unfortunate young 
man in an absolutely penniless condition. 

These proceedings excited great indignation 
at Ameria. The local senate passed a resolu- 
tion to the effect that the committee of ten 
should proceed to Sulla's camp and put him in 
possession of the facts, with the object of re- 
movino- the name of the father from the list of 
the proscribed, and reinstating the son in his 
inheritance. The ten proceeded accordingly to 
the camp, but Chrysogonus cajoled and over- 
reached them. It was represented to them by 
persons of high position that there was no need 
to trouble Sulla with the affair. The name 
should be removed from the list ; the property 
should be restored. Capito, who was one of 
the ten, added his personal assurance to the 



52 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



same effect, and the deputation, satisfied that 
their object had been attained, returned to 
Ameria. There was of course no intention of 
fulfilHng the promises thus made. The first 
idea of the trio was to deal with the son as 
they had dealt with the father. Some hint of 
this purpose was conveyed to him, and he fled 
to Rome, where he was hospitably entertained 
by Caecilia, a wealthy lady of the family of 
Metellus, and therefore related to Sulla s wife, 
who indeed bore the same name. As he was 
now safe from violence, it was resolved to take 
the audacious step of accusing him of the 
murder of his father. Outrageous as it seems, 
the plan held out some promise of success. 
The accused was a man of singularly reserved 
character, rough and boorish in manner, and 
with no thoughts beyond the rustic occupations 
to which his life was devoted. His father, on 
the other hand, had been a man of genial 
temper, who spent much of his time among 
the polished circles of the Capitol. If there was 
no positive estrangement between them, there 
was a great discrepancy of tastes, and probably 
very little intercourse. This it would be easy 



IN THE DA YS OF THE DICTA TOR. S3 



to exaggerate into something like a plausible 
charge.especially under the circumstances of the 
case. It was beyond doubt that many murders 
closely resembling the murder of Roscius had 
been committed during the past year, com- 
mitted some of them by sons. This was the 
first time that an alleged culprit was brought 
to trial, and it was probable that the jury would 
be inclined to severity. In any case, and what- 
ever the evidence, it was hoped that the verdict 
would not be such as to imply the guilt of 
a favorite of Sulla. He was the person who 
would profit most by the condemnation of the 
accused, and it was hoped that he would take 
the necessary means to secure it. 

The friends of the father were satisfied of 
the innocence of the son, and they exerted 
themselves to secure for him an efficient 
defense. Sulla was so much dreaded that 
none of the more conspicuous orators of the 
time were willing to undertake the task. 
Cicero, however, had the courage which they 
wanted ; and his speech, probably little altered 
from the form in which he delivered it, remains. 

It was a horrible crime of which his client 



54 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 

was accused, and the punishment the most 
awful known to the Roman law. The face of 
the guilty man was covered with a wolfs skin, 
as being one v/ho was not worthy to see the 
light ; shoes of wood were put upon his feet 
that they might not touch the earth. He was 
then thrust into a sack ot leather, and with him 
four animals which were supposed to symbolize 
all that was most hideous and depraved — the 
dog, a common object of contempt ; the cock, 
proverbial for its want of all filial affection ; the 
poisonous viper ; and the ape, which was the 
base imitation of man. In this strange com- 
pany he was thrown into the nearest river or sea. 

Cicero begins by explaining vv^hy he had 
undertaken a case which his elders and betters 
had declined. It was not because he was 
bolder, but because he was more insignificant 
than they, and could speak with impunity when 
they could not choose but be silent. He then 
gives the facts in detail, the murder of Roscius, 
the seizure of his property, the fruitless depU' 
tation to Sulla, the flight of the son to Rome, 
and the audacious resolve of his enemies to 
indict him for parricide. They had murdered 



IN THE PAYS OF THE DICTATOR. 55 



his father, they had robbed him of his patri- 
mony, and now they accused him — of what 
crime ? Surely of nothing else than the crime 
of having escaped their attack. The thing 
reminded him of the story of Fimbria and 
Scsevola. Fimbria, an absolute madman, as 
was allowed by all who were not mad them- 
selves, got some ruffian to stab Scaevola at 
the funeral of Marius. He was stabbed but 
not killed. When Fimbria found that he was 
likely to live, he indicted him. For what do 
you indict a man so blameless ? asked some 
one. For what ? for not allowing himself to 
be stabbed to the heart. ThEs is exactly why 
the confederates have indicted Roscius. His 
crime has been of escaping from their hands, 
Roscius killed his father," you say. A young 
man, I suppose, led away by worthless com- 
panions." Not so; he is more than forty years 
of age. Extravagance and debt drove him to 
It.'' No ; you say yourself that he never goes 
to an entertainment, and he certainly owes 
nothing. Well," you say, his father disliked 
him." Why did he dislike him? '^That," 
you reply, I cannot say ; but he certainly 



S6 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



kept one son with him, and left this Roscius 
to look after his farms." Surely this is a 
strange punishment, to give him the charge 
of so fine an estate. But," you repeat, he 
kept his other with him." Now listen to 
me," cries Cicero, turning with savage sarcasm 
to the prosecutor, Providence never allovv^ed 
you to know who your father was. Still you 
have read books. Do you remember in 
Csecilius' play how the father had two sons, 
and kept one with him and left the other in 
the country ? and do you remember that the 
one who lived with him was not really his son, 
the other was true-born, and yet it was the 
true-born who lived in the country ? And is it 
such a disgrace to live in the country ? It is 
well that you did not live in old times when 
they took a Dictator from the plow ; when 
the men who made Rome what it is cultivated 
their own land, but did not covet the land of 
others. ' Ah ! but,' you say, ' the father in- 
tended to disinherit him.' Why? ' I cannot 
say.' Did he disinherit him ? ' No, he did not.' 
Who stopped him ? * Well, he was thinking of 
it* To whom did he say so ? 'To no one/ 



IN THE DA YS OF THE DICTA TOR. 57 



Surely," cries Cicero, " this is to abuse the laws 
and justice and your dignity in the basest and 
most wanton way, to make charges which he not 
only cannot but does not even attempt to 
establish." 

Shortly after comes a lively description of 
the prosecutor's demeanor. " It was really 
worth while, if you observed, gentlemen, the 
man's utter indifference as he was conducting 
his case. I take it that when he saw who was 
sitting on these benches, he asked whether 
such an one or such an one was engaged for 
the defense. Of me he never thought, for I 
had never spoken before in a criminal case. 
When he found that none of the usual speakers 
were concerned in it, he became so careless 
that when the humor took him, he sat down, 
then walked about, sometimes called a servant, 
to give him orders, I suppose, for dinner, and 
certainly treated this court in which you are 
sitting as if it were an absolute solitude. At 
last he brought his speech to an end. I rose 
to reply. He could be seen to breathe again 
that it was I and no one else. I noticed, 
gentlemen, that he continued to laugh and be 



58 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



inattentive till I mentioned Chrysogonus. As 
soon as I got to him my friend roused himself 
and was evidently astonished. I saw what had 
touched him, and repeated the name a second 
time, and a third. From that time men have 
never ceased to run briskly backwards and 
forwards, to tell Chrysogonus, I suppose, that 
there was some one in the country who ven- 
tured to oppose his pleasure, that the case was 
being pleaded otherwise than as he imagined it 
would be ; that the sham sale of goods was 
being exposed, the confederacy grievously 
handled, his popularity and power disregarded, 
that the people were giving their whole atten- 
tion to the cause, and that the common opin- 
ion was that the transaction generally was dis- 
graceful. 

Then," continued the speaker, this charge 
of parricide, so monstrous is the crime, must 
have the very strongest evidence to support it. 
There was a case at Tarracina of a man being 
found murdered in the chamber where he was 
sleeping, his two sons, both young men, being in 
the same room. No one could be found, either 
slave or free man, who seemed likely to have 



IN THE DA YS OF THE DICTATOR. 59 



done the deed ; and as the two sons, grown up 
as they were, declared that they knew nothing 
about it, they were indicted for parricide. What 
could be so suspicious ? Suspicious, do I say ? 
Nay, worse. That neither knew any thing about 
it? That any one had ventured into that 
chamber at the very time when there were in it 
two young men who would certainly perceive 
and defeat the attempt ? Yet, because it was 
proved to the jury that the young men had 
been found fast asleep, with the door wide 
open, they were acquitted. It was thought 
incredible that men who had just committed so 
monstrous a crime could possibly sleep. Why, 
Solon, the wisest of all legislators, drawing up 
his code of laws, provided no punishment for 
this crime ; and when he was asked the reason 
replied that he believed that no one would ever 
commit it. To provide a punishment would 
be to suggest rather than prevent. Our own 
ancestors provided indeed a punishment, but it 
was of the strangest kind, showing how strange, 
how monstrous they thought the crime. And 
what evidence do you bring forward ? The 
man v/as not at Rome. That is proved. There- 



6o ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



fore he must have done it, if he did it at all, by 
the hands of others. Who were these others ? 
Were they free men or slaves ? If they were 
free men where did they come from, where 
live ? How did he hire them ? Where is the 
proof? You haven't a shred of evidence, and 
yet you accuse him of parricide. And if they 
were slaves, where, again I ask, are they? 
There were two slaves who saw the deed ; but 
they belonged to the confederate not to the 
accused. Why do you not produce them? 
Purely because they would prove your guilt. 

" It is there indeed that we find the real truth 
of the matter. It was the maxim of a famous 
lawyer, Ask : who profited by the deed? I ask 
it now. It was Magnus who profited. He was 
poor before, and now he is rich. And then 
he was in Rome at the time of the murder ; and 
he was familiar with assassins. Remember too 
the strange speed with which he sent the news 
to Ameria, and sent it, not to the son, as one 
might expect, but to Capito his accomplice ; 
for that he was an accomplice is evident enough. 
What else could he be when he so cheated the 
deputation that went to Sulla at Volaterr^ ? " 



A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE. 



6i 



I 



Cicero then turned to Chrysogonus, and 
attacked him with a boldness which is surpris- 
Ing, when we remember how high he stood 
in the favor of the absolute master of Rome, 
«' See how he comes down from his fine man- 
sion on the Palatine. Yes, and he has for his 
own enjoyment a delightful retreat in the 
suburbs, and many an estate besides, and not 
one of them but is both handsome and con- 
veniently near. His house is crowded with 
ware of Corinth and Delos, among them that 
famous self-acting cooking apparatus, which he 
lately bought at a price so high that the pass- 
ers-by, when they heard the clerk call out the 
highest bid, supposed that it must be a farm 
which was being sold. And what quantities, 
think you, he has of embossed plate, and cover- 
lets of purple, and pictures, and statues, and 
colored marbles ! Such quantities, I tell you, as 
scarce could be piled together in one mansion 
in a time of tumult and rapine from many 
wealthy establishments. And his household- 
why should I describe how many it numbers, 
and how varied are its accomplishments ? I do 
not speak of ordinary domestics, the cook, the 



62 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

baker, the litter-bearer. Why, for the mere 
enjoyment of his ears he has such a multitude 
of men that the whole neighborhood echoes 
again with the daily music of singers, and harp- 
players, and flute-players, and with the uproar 
of his nightly banquets. What daily expenses, 
what extravagance, as you well know, gentle- 
men, there must be in such a life as this ! how 
costly must be these banquets ! Creditable ban- 
quets, indeed, held in such a house — a house, 
do I say, and not a manufactory of wickedness, 
a place of entertainment for every kind of 
crime ? And as for the man himself — you see, 
gentlemen, how he bustles every where about 
the forum, with his hair fashionably arranged 
and dripping with perfumes ; what a crowd of 
citizens, yes, of citizens, follow him ; you see 
how he looks down upon every one, thinks no 
one can be compared to himself, fancies 
himself the one rich and powerful man in 
Rome?" 

The jury seems to have caught the contagion 
of courage from the advocate. They acquitted 
the accused. It is not known whether he ever 
recovered his property. But as Sulla retired 



IN THE DA YS OF THE DICTA TOR. 63 
from power in the following year, and died the 
year after, we may hope that the favorites and 
the villains whom he had sheltered were com- 
celled to disgorge some at least of their gains. 



CHAPTER IV. 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



Of all the base creatures who found a profit in 
the massacers and plunderings which Sulla 
commanded or permitted, not one was baser 
than Caius Verres. The crimes that he com- 
mitted would be beyond our belief if it were 
not for the fact that he never denied them. He 
betrayed his friends, he perverted justice, he 
plundered a temple with as little scruple as he 
plundered a private house, he murdered a citi- 
zen as boldly as he murdered a foreigner ; in fact, 
he was the most audacious, the most cruel, the 
most shameless of men. And yet he rose to 
high office at home and abroad, and had it not 
been for the courage, sagacity, and eloquence 
of one man, he might have risen to the very 
highest. What Roman citizens had sometimes, 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



65 



and Roman subjects, it is to be feared, very 
often to endure may be seen from the picture 
which we are enabled to draw of a Roman 
magistrate. 

Roman politicians began public life as quas- 
tors. (A quaestor was an official who managed 
money matters for higher magistrates. Every 
governor of a province had one or more 
qusstors under him. They were elected at 
Rome, and their posts were assigned to them 
by lot.) Verres was qusestor in Gaul and em- 
bezzled the public money ; he was qusstor in 
Cilicia with Dolabella, a like-minded governor, 
and diligently used his opportunity. This time 
it was not money only, but works of art, on 
which he laid his hands ; and in these the great 
cities, whether in Asia or in Europe, were still 
rich. The most audacious, perhaps, of these 
robberies was perpetrated in the island of 
Delos. Delos was known all over the world 
as the island of Apollo. The legend was that 
it was the birthplace of the god. None of his 
.shrines was more frequented or more famous. 
Verres was indifferent to such considerations. 
He stripped the temple of its finest statues, 



66 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



jtnd loaded a merchant ship which he had hired 
with the booty. But this time he was not lucky 
enough to secure it. The islanders, though 
they had discovered the theft, did not, indeed, 
venture to complain. They thought it was the 
doing of the governor, and a governor, though 
his proceedings might be impeached after his 
term of office, was not a person with whom it 
was safe to remonstrate. But a terrible storm 
suddenly burst upon the island. The governor's 
departure was delayed. To set sail in such 
weather was out of the question. The sea was 
indeed so high that the town became scarcely 
habitable. Then Verres' ship was wrecked, 
and the statues were found cast upon the shore. 
The governor ordered them to be replaced in 
the temple, and the storm subsided as suddenly 
as it had arisen. 

On his return to Rome Do\abella was im- 
peached for extortion. With characteristic 
baseness Verres gave evidence against him, 
evidence so convincing as to cause a verdict of 
guilty. But he thus secured his own gains, 
and these he used so profusely in the purchase 
of votes that two or three years afterwards he 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 67 



was elected proton The pr^tors performed 
various functions which were assigned to them 
by lot. Chance, or it may possibly have been 
contrivance, gave to Verres the most consider- 
able of them all. He was made " Praetor of the 
City ; " that is, a judge before whom a certam 
class 'of very important causes were tried. Of 
course he showed himself scandalously unjust. 
One instance of his proceedings may suffice. 

A certain Junius had made a contract for 
keeping the temple of Castor in repair. When 
Verres came into office he had died, leaving a 
son under age. There had been some neglect, 
due probably to the troubles of the times, m 
seeing that the contracts had been duly exe- 
cuted, and the Senate passed a resolution that 
Verres and one of his fellow-prstors should see 
to the matter. The temple of Castor came 
under review like the others, and Verres, know- 
ing that the original contractor was dead, in- 
quired who was the responsible person. When , 
he heard of the son under age he recognized at 
once a golden opportunity. It was one of the 
maxims which he had laid down for his own 
guidance, and which he had even been wont to 



68 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



give out for the benefit of his friends, that much 
profit might be made out of the property of 
wards. It had been arranged that the guardian 
of the young Junius should take the contract 
into his own hands, and, as the temple was in 
excellent repair, there was no difficulty in the 
way. Verres summoned the guardian to appear 
before him. Is there any thing," he asked, 

that your ward has not made good, and which 
we ought to require of him ? " No," said he, 

every thing is quite right ; all the statues and 
offerings are there, and the fabric is in excellent 
repair." From the praetors point of view this 
was not satisfactory ; and he determined on a 
personal visit. Accordingly he went to the 
temple, and inspected it. The ceiling vv^as ex- 
cellent ; the whole building in the best repair. 

What is to be done ? " he asked of one of his 
satellites. Well," said the man, there is 
nothing for you to meddle with here, except 
possibly to require that the columns should be 
restored to the perpendicular." Restored to 
the perpendicular ? what do you mean ? " said 
Verres, who knew nothing of architecture. It 
was explained to him that it very seldom hap- 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



69 



pened that a column was absolutely true to the 
perpendicular. Very good," said Verres ; we 
will have the columns made perpendicular." 
Notice accordingly was sent to the lad's 
guardians. Disturbed at the prospect of indef- 
inite loss to their ward s property, they sought 
an interview with Verres. One of the noble 
family of Marcellus waited upon him, and 
remonstrated against the iniquity of the pro- 
ceeding. The remonstrance was in vain. The 
praetor showed no signs of relenting. There 
yet remained one way, a way only too well 
known to all who had to deal with him, of 
obtaining their object. Application must be 
made to his mistress (a Greek freedwoman of 
the name of Chelidon or The Swallow"). If 
she could be induced to take an interest in the 
case something might yet be done. Degrading 
as such a course must have been to men of rank 
and honor, they resolved, in the interest of 
their ward, to take it. They went to Cheli- 
don's house. It was thronged with people who 
were seeking favors from the praetor. Some 
were begging for decisions in their favor; some 
for fresh trials of their cases. ''.I want posses- 



70 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



sion," cried one. He must not take the prop- 
erty from me," said another. Don't let him 
pronounce judgment against me," cried a third. 

The property must be assigned to me," was 
the demand of a fourth. Some were counting 
out money ; others signing bonds. The depu- 
tation, after waiting awhile, were admitted to 
the presence. Their spokesman explained the 
case, begged for Chelidon's assistance, and pro- 
mised a substantial consideration. The lady 
was very gracious. She would willingly do what 
she could, and would talk to the praetor about 
it. The deputation must come again the next 
day and hear how she had succeeded. They 
came again, but found that nothing could be 
done. Verres felt sure that a large sum of 
money was to be got out of the proceeding, 
and resolutely refused any compromise. 

They next made an offer of about two thou- 
sand pounds. This again was rejected. Verres 
resolved that he would put up the contract to 
auction, and did his best that the guardians 
should have no notice of it. Here, however, 
he failed. They attended the auction and made 
a bid Of course the lowest bidder ought to 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



71 



have been accepted, so long as he gave security 
for doing the work well. But Verres refused to 
accept it. He knocked down the contract to him- 
self at a price of more than five thousand pounds, 
and this though there were persons willing to do 
it for less than a sixth of that sum. As a matter of 
fact very little was done. Four of the columns 
were pulled down and built up again with the 
same stones. Others were whitewashed ; some 
had the old cement taken out and fresh put in.^ 
The highest estimate for all that could possibly 
be wanted was less than eight hundred pounds. 

His year of office ended, Verres was sent as 
governor to Sicily. By rights he should have 
remained there twelve months only, but his 
successor was detained by the Servile war in 
Italy, and his stay was thus extended to nearly 
three years, three years into which he crowded 
an incredible number of cruelties and robberies. 
Sicily was perhaps the wealthiest of all the 
provinces. Its fertile wheat-fields yielded 
harvests which, now that agriculture had begun 
to decay in Italy, provided no small part of the 
daily bread of Rome. In its cities, founded 
* " Pointed/' I suppose. 



72 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



most of them several centuries before by 
colonists from Greece, were accumulated the 
riches of many generations. On the whole it 
had been lightly treated by its Roman con- 
querors. Some of its states had early discerned 
which would be the winning side,and by making 
their peace in time had secured their privileges 
and possessions. Others had been allowed to 
surrender themselves on favorable terms. 
This wealth had now been increasing without 
serious disturbance for more than a hundred 
years. The houses of the richer class were 
full of the rich tapestries of the East, of gold 
and silver plate cunningly chased or embossed, 
of statues and pictures wrought by the hands 
of the most famous artists of Greece. The 
temples were adorned with costly offerings 
and with images that were known all over the 
civilized world. The Sicilians were probably 
prepared to pay something for the privilege 
of being governed by Rome. And indeed the 
privilege was not without its value. The days 
of freedom indeed were over ; but the turbu- 
lence, the incessant strife, the bitter struggles 
between neighbors and parties were also at an 



A ROMAN MA GIS TRA TE. 7 3 



end. Men were left to accumulate wealth and 
to enjoy it without hindrance. Any moderate 
demands they were willing enough to meet. 
They did not complain, for instance, or at least 
did not complain aloud, that they were com- 
pelled to supply their rulers with a fixed quantity 
of corn at prices lower than could have been 
obtained in the open market. And they would 
probably have been ready to secure the good 
will of a governor who fancied himself a con- 
noisseur in art with handsome presents from 
their museums and picture galleries. But the 
exactions of Verres exceeded all bounds both of 
custom and of endurance. The story of how he 
dealt with the wheat-growers of the province is 
too tedious and complicated to be told in this 
place. Let it suffice to say that he enriched 
himself and his greedy troop of followers at the 
cost of absolute ruin both to the cultivators of 
the soil and to the Roman capitalists who 
farmed this part of the public revenue. As to 
the way in which he laid his hands on the pos- 
sessions of temples and of private citizens, his 
doings were emphatically summed up by his 
prosecutor when he came, as we shall afterwards 



74 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



see, to be put upon his trial I affirm that in 
the whole of Sicily, wealthy and old-established 
province as it is, in all those towns, in all those 
wealthy homes, there was not a single piece of 
silver plate, a single article of Corinthian or 
Delian ware, a single jewel or pearl, a single 
article of gold or ivory, a single picture, whether 
on panel or on canvas, which he did not hunt 
up and examine, and, if it pleased his fancy, 
abstract. This is a great thing to say, you 
think. Well, mark how I say it. It is not for 
the sake of rhetorical exaggeration that I make 
this sweeping assertion, that I declare that this 
fellow did not leave a single article of the kind 
in the whole province. I speak not in the 
language of the professional accuser but in plain 
Latin. Nay, I will put it more clearly still : in 
no single private house, in no town ; in no place, 
profane or even sacred ; in the hands of no 
Sicilian, of no citizen of Rome, did he leave a 
single article, public or private property, of 
things profane or things religious, which came 
under his eyes or touched his fancy." 

Some of the more remarkable of these acts 
of spoliation it may be worth while to relate. 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



75 



A certain Heius, who was at once the wealthiest 
and most popular citizen of Messana, had a 
private chapel of great antiquity in his house, 
and in it four statues of the very greatest value. 
There was a Cupid by Praxiteles, a replica of a 
famous work which attracted visitors to the un- 
interesting little town of Thespiae in Bceotia ; a 
Hercules from the chisel of Myro ; and two 
bronze figures, " Basket-bearers," as they were 
called, because represented as carrying sacred 
vessels in baskets on their heads. These were 
the work of Polyclitus. The Cupid had been 
brought to Rome to ornament the forum on 
some great occasion, and had been carefully 
restored to its place. The chapel and its con- 
tents was the great sight of the town. No one 
passed through without inspecting it. It was 
naturally, therefore, one of the first things that 
. Verres saw, Messana being on his route to the 
capital of his province. He did not actually 
take the statues, he bought them ; but the price 
that he paid was so ridiculously low that pur- 
chase was only another name for robbery. 
Something near sixty pounds was given for the 
four. If we recall the prices that would be paid 



76 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



now-a-days for a couple of statues by Michael 
Angelo and two of the masterpieces of Raphael 
and Correggio, we may imagine what a mon- 
strous fiction this sale must have been, all the 
more monstrous because the owner was a 
wealthy man, who had no temptation to sell, 
and who was known to value his possessions 
not only as works of art but as adding dignity 
to his hereditary worship. 

A wealthy inhabitant of Tyndaris invited the 
governor to dinner. He was a Roman citizen 
and imagined that he might venture on a dis- 
play which a provincial might have considered 
to be dangerous. Among the plate on the 
table was a silver dish adorned with some very 
fine medallions. It struck the fancy of the 
guest, who promptly had it removed, and who 
considered himself to be a marvel of modera- 
tion when he sent it back with the medallions 
abstracted. 

His secretary happened one day to receive 
a letter which bore a noteworthy impression 
on the composition of chalk which the Greeks 
used for sealing. It attracted the attention of 
Verres, who inquired from what place it had 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



77 



come. Hearing that it had been sent from 
Agrigentum, he communicated to his agents in 
that town his desire that the seal-ring should 
be at once secured for him. And this was 
done. The unlucky possessor, another Romar. 
citizen, by the way, had his ring actually drawn 
from his finger. 

A still more audacious proceeding was to rob, 
not this time a mere Sicilian provincial or a 
simple Roman citizen, but one of the tributary 
kings, the heir of the great house of Antiochus, 
which not many years before had matched 
itself with the power of Rome. Two of the 
young princes had visited Rome, intending to 
prosecute their claims to the throne of Egypt, 
which, they contended, had come to them 
through their mother. The times v/ere not 
favorable to the suit, and they returned to their 
country, one of them, Antiochus, probably the 
elder, choosing to take Sicily on his way. He 
naturally visited Syracuse, where Verres was 
residing, and Verres at once recognized a golden 
opportunity. The first thing was to send 
the visitor a handsome supply of wine, olive- 
oil, and wheat. The next was to invite bim to 



78 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



dinner. The dining-room and table were richly 
furnished, the silver plate being particularly 
splendid. Antiochus was highly delighted with 
|the entertainment, and lost no time in return- 
ing the compliment. The dinner to which he 
invited the governor was set out with a splen- 
dor to which Verres had nothing to compare. 
There was silver plate in abundance, and there 
were also cups of gold, these last adorned 
with magnificent gems. 

Conspicuous among the ornaments of the 
table was a drinking vessel, all in one piece, 
probably of amethyst, and with a handle of 
gold. Verres expressed himself delighted with 
what he saw. He handled every vessel and 
was loud in its praises. The simple-minded 
King, on the other hand, heard the compliment 
with pride. Next day came a message. Would 
the King lend some of the more beautiful cups 
to his excellency? He wished to show them 
to his own artists. A special request was made 
for the amethyst cup. All was sent without a 
suspicion of danger. 

But the King had still in his possession 
something that especially excited the Roman s 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



19 



cupidity. This was a candelabrum of gold richly 
adorned with jewels. It had been intended for 
an offering to the tutelary deity of Romejupiter 
of the Capitol. But the temple, which had 
been burned to the ground in the civil wars, had 
not yet been rebuilt, and the princes, anxious 
that their gift should not be seen before it was 
publicly presented, resolved to carry it backwith 
them to Syria. Verres, however, had got, no 
one knew how, some inkling of the matter, and 
he begged Antiochus to let him have a sight of 
it. The young prince, who, so far from being 
suspicious, was hardly sufficiently cautious, had 
it carefully wrapped up, and sent it to the 
governor's palace. When he had minutely 
inspected it, the messengers prepared to carry 
it back. Verres, however, had not seen enough 
of it. It clearly deserved more than one 
examination. Would they leave it with him 
for a time ? They left it, suspecting nothing. 

Antiochus, on his part, had no apprehensions. 
When some days had passed and the candela- 
brum was not returned, he sent to ask for it. 
The governor begged the messenger to come 
again the next day. It seemed a strange 



8o ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



request ; still the man came again and was 
again unsuccessful. The King himself then 
waited on the governor and begged him to 
return it. Verres hinted, or rather said plainly, 
that he should very much like it as a present. 

This is impossible/' replied the prince, the 
honor due to Jupiter and public opinion forbid 
it. All the world knows that the offering is to 
be made, and I cannot go back from my word.'' 
Verres perceived that soft words would be use- 
less, and took at once another line. The King, 
he said, must leave Sicily before nightfall. The 
public safety demanded it. He had heard of a 
piratical expedition which was on its way from 
Syria to the province, and that his departure 
was necessary. Antiochus had no choice but 
to obey ; but before he went he publicly pro- 
tested in the market-place of Syracuse against 
the wrong that had been done. His other 
valuables, the gold and the jewels, he did not 
so much regret ; but it was monstrous that he 
should be robbed of the gift that he destined 
for the altar of the tutelary god of Rome. 

The Sicilian cities were not better able to 
protect their possessions than were private in- 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



8i 



dividuals. Segesta was a town that had early 
ranged itself on the side of the Romans, with 
whom its people had a legendary relationship. 
(The story was that ^neas on his way to Italy 
had left there some of his followers, who were 
unwilling any longer to endure the hardships of 
the journey.) In early days it had been de- 
stroyed by the Carthaginians, who had carried 
off all its most valuable possessions, the most 
precious being a statue of Diana, a work of great 
beauty and invested with a peculiar sacredness. 
When Carthage fell, Scipio its conqueror 
restored the spoils which had been carried off 
from the cities of Sicily. Among other things 
Agrigentum had recovered its famous bull of 
brass, in which the tyrant Phalaris had burned, 
it was said, his victims. Segesta was no less 
fortunate than its neighbors, and got back its 
Diana. It was set on a pedestal on which 
was inscribed the name of Scipio, and became 
one of the most notable sights of the island. 
It was of a colossal size, but the sculptor had 
contrived to preserve the semblance of maidenly 
grace and modesty. Verres saw and coveted 
it. He demanded it of the authorities of the 



82 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



town and was met with a refusal It was easy 
for the governor to make them suffer for their 
obstinacy. All their imposts were doubled and 
more than doubled. Heavy requisitions for men 
and money and corn were made upon them. 
A still more hateful burden, that of attending 
the court and progresses of the governor was 
imposed on their principal citizens. This was 
a contest which they could not hope to wage 
with success. Segesta resolved that the statue 
should be given up. It was accordingly carried 
away from the town, all the women of the town, 
married and unmarried, following it on its 
journey, showering perfumes and flowers upon 
it, and burning incense before it, till it had 
passed beyond the borders of their territory. 

If Segesta had its Diana, Tyndaris had its 
Mercury ; and this also Verreswas resolved to 
add to his collection. He issued his orders to 
Sopater, chief magistrate of the place, that the 
statue was to betaken to Messana. (Messana 
being conveniently near to Italy was the place 
in which he stored his plunder.) Sopater 
refusing was threatened with the heaviest 
penalties if it was not done without delay, and 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



judged it best to bring the matter before the 
local senate. The proposition was received 
with shouts of disapproval. Verres paid a 
second visit to the town and at once inquired 
what had been done about the statue. He was 
told that it was impossible. The senate had 
decreed the penalty of death against any one 
that touched it. Apart from that, it would be 
an act of the grossest impiety. " Impiety ? " 
he burst out upon the unlucky magistrates ; 
" penalty of death ! senate ! what senate ? As for 
you, Sopater, you shall not escape. Give me 
up the statue or you shall be flogged to death." 
Sopater again referred the matter to his towns- 
men and implored them with tears to give way. 
The meeting separated in great tumult without 
giving him any answer. Summoned again to 
the governor's presence, he repeated that noth- 
ing could be done. But Verres had still resources 
in store. He ordered the lictors to strip the 
man, the chief magistrate, be it remembered, of 
an important town, and to set him, naked as he 
was, astride on one of the equestrian statues 
that adorned the market-place. It was winter ; 
the weather was bitterly cold, with heavy rain. 



84 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



The pain caused by the naked Hmbs being thus 
brought into close contact with the bronze of 
the statue was intense. So frightful was his 
suffering that his fellow-townsmen could not 
bear to see it. They turned with loud cries 
upon the senate and compelled them to vote 
that the coveted statue should be given up to 
the governor. So Verres got his Mercury. 

We have a curious picture of the man as he 
made his progresses from town to town in his 
search for treasures of art. ''As soon as it was 
spring — and he knew that it was spring not from 
the rising of any constellation or the blowing of 
any wind, but simply because he saw the roses — 
then indeed he bestirred himself. So enduring, 
so untiring was he that no one ever saw him 
upon horseback. No — he was carried in a litter 
with eight bearers. His cushion was of the 
finest linen of Malta, and it was stuffed with 
roses. There was one wreath of roses upon 
his head, and another round his neck, made of 
the finest thread, of the smallest mesh, and 
this, too, was full of roses. He was carried 
in this litter straight to his chamber ; and 
there he gave his audiences." 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



85 



When spring had passed into summer even 
such exertions were too much for him. He could 
not even endure to remain in his official resi- 
dence, the old palace of the kings of Syracuse. 
A number of tents were pitched for him at the 
entrance of the harbor to catch the cool breezes 
from the sea. There he spent his days and 
nights, surrounded by troops of the vilest 
companions, and let the province take care of 
itself. 

Such a governor was not likely to keep his 
province free from the pirates who, issuing from 
their fastnesses on the Cilician coast and else- 
where, kept the seaboard cities of the Mediter- 
ranean in constant terror. One success, and 
one only, he seems to have gained over them. 
His fleet was lucky enough to come upon a 
pirate ship, which was so overladen with spoil 
that it could neither escape nor defend itself. 
News was at once carried to Verres, who roused 
himself from his feasting to issue strict orders 
that no one was to meddle with the prize. It 
was towed into Syracuse, and he hastened to 
examine his booty. The general feeling was 
one of delight that a crew of merciless villains 



86 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



had been captured and were about to pay the 
penalty of their crimes. Verres had far more 
practical views. Justice might deal as she 
pleased with the old and useless ; the young and 
able bodied, and all who happened to be handi- 
craftsmen, were too valuable to be given up. 
His secretaries, his retinue, his son had their 
share of the prize ; six, who happened to be 
singers, were sent as a present to a friend at 
Rome. As to the pirate captain himself, no one 
knew what had become of him. It was a 
favorite amusement in Sicily to watch the suf- 
ferings of a pirate, if the government had had 
the luck but to catch one, while he was being 
slowly tortured to death. The people of 
Syracuse, to whom the pirate captain was only 
too well known, watched eagerly for the day 
when he was to be brought out to suffer. They 
kept an account of those who were brought out 
to execution, and reckoned them against the 
number of the crew, which it had been easy to 
conjecture from the size of the ship. Verres 
had to correct the deficiency as best he could. 
He had the audacity to fill the places of the 
prisoners whom he had sold or given away 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



87 



With Roman citizens, whom on various false 
pretenses he had thrown into prison. The 
pirate captain himself was suffered to escape on 
the payment, it was believed, of a very large 
sum of money. 

But Verres had not yet done with the pirates. 
It was necessary that some show, at least, of 
coping with them should be made. There was 
a fleet, and the fleet must put to sea. A citizen 
of Syracuse, who had no sort of qualification 
for the task, but whom Verres was anxious to 
get out of the way, was appointed to the com- 
mand. The governor paid it the unwonted 
attention of coming out of his tent to see it 
pass. His very dress, as he stood upon the 
shore, was a scandal to all beholders. His 
sandals, his purple cloak, his tunic, or under- 
garment, reaching to his ankles, were thought 
wholly unsuitable to the dignity of a Roman 
magistrate. The fleet, as might be expected, 
was scandalously ill equipped. Its men for the 
most part existed, as the phrase is, only on 
paper." There was the proper complement of 
names, but of names only. The praetor drew 
from the treasury the pay for these imaginary 



88 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



soldiers and marines, and diverted it into his 
own pocket. And the ships were as ill pro- 
visioned as they were ill manned. After they 
had been something less than five days at sea 
they put into the harbor of Pachynus. The 
crews were driven to satisfy their hunger on the 
roots of the dwarf palm, which grew, and 
indeed still grows, in abundance on that spot. 
Cleomenes meanwhile was following the ex- 
ample of his patron. He had his tent pitched 
on the shore, and sat in it drinking from morn- 
ing to night. While he was thus employed 
tidings were brought that the pirate fleet was 
approaching. He was ill prepared for an 
engagement. His hope had been to complete 
the manning of his ships from the garrison of 
the fort. But Verres had dealt with the fort as 
he had dealt with the fleet. The soldiers were 
as imaginary as the sailors. Still a man of 
courage would have fought. His own ship 
was fairly well manned, and was of a command- 
ing size, quite able to overpower the light 
vessels of the pirates ; and such a crew as there 
was was eager to fight. But Cleomenes was as 
cowardly as he was incompetent. He ordered 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



89 



the mast of his ship to be hoisted, the sails to 
be set, and the cable cut, and made off with all 
speed. The rest of his fleet could do nothing 
but follow his example. The pirates gave 
chase, and captured two of the ships as they 
fled. Cleomenes reached the port of Helorus, 
stranded his ship, and left it to its fate. His 
. colleagues did the same. The pirate chief found 
them thus deserted and burned them. He had 
then the audacity to sail into the inner harbor 
of Syracuse, a place into which, we are told, 
only one hostile fleet, the ill-fated Athenian 
expedition, three centuries and a half before, 
had ever penetrated. The rage of the inhabit- 
ants at this spectacle exceeded all bounds, and 
Verres felt that a victim must be sacrificed. 
He was, of course, himself the chief culprit. 
Next in guilt to him was Cleomenes. But 
Cleomenes was spared for the same scandalous 
reason which had caused his appointment to 
the command. The other captains, who might 
indeed have shown more courage, but who 
were comparatively blameless, were ordered to 
execution. It seemed all the more necessary 
to remove them because they could have given 



90 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



inconvenient testimony as to the inefficient 
condition of the ships. 

The cruelty of Verres was indeed as con- 
spicuous as his avarice. Of this, as of his other 
vices, it would not suit the purpose of this book 
to speak in detail. One conspicuous example 
will suffice. A certain Gavius had given 
offense, how we know not, and had been con- 
fined in the disused stone quarries which 
served for the public prison of Syracuse. 
From these he contrived to escape, and made 
his way to Messana. Unluckily for himself, he 
did not know that Messana was the one place 
in Sicily where it would not be safe to speak 
against the governor. Just as he was about to 
embark for Italy he was heard to complain of 
the treatment which he had received, and was 
arrested arid brought before the chief magis- 
trate of the town. Verres happened to come 
to the town the same day, and heard what had 
happened. He ordered the man to be stripped 
and flogged in the market-place. Gavius 
pleaded that he was a Roman citizen and 
offered proof of his claim. Verres refused to 
listen, and enraged by the repetition of the 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



91 



plea, actually ordered the man to be crucified. 
" And set up," he said to his lictors, " set up 
the cross by the straits. He is a Roman 
citizen, he says, and he will at least be able to 
have a view of his native country." We know 
from the history of St. Paul what a genuine 
privilege and protection this citizenship was. 
And Cicero exactly expresses the feeling on 
the subject in his famous words. " It is a 
crime to put a Roman citizen in irons ; it is 
positive wickedness to inflict stripes upon him ; 
it is close upon parricide to put him to death ; 
as to crucifying him there is no word for it." 
And on this crowning act of audacity Verres 
had the recklessness to venture. 

After holding office for three years Verres 
came back to Rome. The people of Messana, 
his only friends in the islands, had built a mer- 
chantman for him, and he loaded it with his 
spoils. He came back with a light heart. He 
knew indeed that the Sicilians would impeach 
him. His wrong-doings had been too gross, too 
insolent, for him to escape altogether. But he 
was confident that he had the means in his 
hands for securing an acquittal. The men that 



92 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



were to judge him were men of his own order. 
The senators still retained the privilege which 
Sulla had given them. They, and they alone, 
furnished the juries before whom such causes 
were tried. Of these senators not a few had 
a fellow-feeling for a provincial governor ac- 
cused of extortion and wrong. Some had 
plundered provinces in the past ; others hoped 
to do so in the future. Many insignificant men 
who could not hope to obtain such promotion 
were notoriously open to bribes. And some 
who would have scorned to receive money, or 
were too wealthy to be influenced by it, were 
not insensible to the charms of other gifts — to 
a fine statue or a splendid picture judiciously 
bestowed. A few, even more scrupulous, who 
would not accept such presents for their own 
halls or gardens, were glad to have such splen- 
did ornaments for the games which^they ex- 
hibited to the people. Verres came back amply 
provided with these means of securing his safety. 
He openly avowed — for indeed he was as frank 
as he was unscrupulous — that he had trebled 
his extortions in order that, after leaving a 
sufficiency for himself, he might have where- 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



93 



with to win the favor of his judges. It soon 
became evident to him that he would need 
these and all other help, if he was to escape. 
The Sicilians engaged Cicero to plead their 
cause. He had been qusstor in a division of 
the province for a year six years before, and 
had won golden opinions by his moderation 
and integrity. And Cicero was a power in the 
courts of the law, all the greater because he 
had never yet prosecuted, but had kept himself 
to what was held the more honorable task 
of defending persons accused.^ Verres secured 
Hortensius. He too was a great orator ; 
Cicero had chosen him as the model which he 
would imitate, and speaks of him as having 
been a splendid and energetic speaker, full of 
life both in diction and action. At that time, 
perhaps, his reputation stood higher than that 
of Cicero himself. It was something to have 
retained so powerful an advocate ; it would 
be still more if it could be contrived that the 
prosecutor should be a less formidable person. 
And there was a chance of contriving this. A 

' So Horace compliments a friend on being " the illus- 
trious safeguard of the sad accused." 



94 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DAYS OF CICERO. 



certain Caecilius was induced to come forward, 
and claim for himself, against Cicero, the duty 
of prosecuting the late governor of Sicily; He 
too had been a quaestor in the province, and he 
had quarreled, or he pretended that he had 
quarreled, with Verres. The first thing there 
had to be argued before the court, which, like 
our own, consisted of a presiding judge and a 
jury, was the question, who was to prosecute, 
Cicero or Caecilius, or the two together. Cicero 
made a great speech, in which he established 
his own claim. He was the choice of the 
provincials ; the honesty of his rival was doubt- 
ful, while it was quite certain that he was 
incompetent. The court decided in his favor, 
and he was allowed one hundred and ten days to 
collect evidence. Verres had another device in 
store. This time a member of the Senate came 
forward and claimed to prosecute Verres for 
misdoings in the province of Achaia in Greece. 
He wanted one hundred and eight days only 
for collecting evidence. If this claim should be 
allowed, the second prosecution would be taken 
first ; of course it was not intended to be serious, 
and would end in an acquittal. Meanwhile all 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



95 



the available time would have been spent, and 
the Sicilian affair would have to be postponed 
till the next year. It was on postponement 
indeed that Verres rested his hopes. In July 
Hortensius was elected consul for the following 
year, and if the trial could only be put off till he 
had entered upon office, nothing was to be 
feared. Verres was openly congratulated in the 
streets of Rome on his good fortune. " I have 
good news for you," cried a friend ; " the election 
has taken place and you are acquitted." An- 
other friend had been chosen prstor, and would 
be the new presiding judge. Consul and prsetor 
between them would have the appointment of 
the new jurors, and would take care that they 
should be such as the accused desired. At the 
same time the new governor of Sicily would be 
also a friend, and he would throw judicious ob- 
stacles in the way of the attendance of witnesses. 
The sham prosecution came to nothing. The 
prosecutor never left Italy. Cicero, on the other 
hand, employed the greatest diligence. Accom- 
panied by his cousin Lucius he visited all the 
chief cities of Sicily, and collected from them an 
enormous mass of evidence. In this work he 



96 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



only spent fifty out of the hundred and ten days 
allotted to him, and was ready to begin long 
before he was expected. 

Verres had still one hope left; and this, 
strangely enough,sprang out of the very number 
and enormity of his crimes. The mass of evi- 
dence was so great that the trial might be ex- 
pected to last for a long time. If it could only 
be protracted into the next year, when his 
friends would be in office, he might still hope to 
escape. And indeed there was but little time 
left. The trial began on the fifth of August. In 
the middle of the month Pompey was to exhibit 
some games. Then would come the games 
called The Games of Rome,'' and after this 
others again, filling up much of the three 
months of September, October, and November. 
Cicero anticipated this difficulty. He made a 
short speech (it could not have lasted more than 
two hours in delivering), in which he stated the 
case in outline. He made a strong appeal to 
the jury. They were themselves on their trial. 
The eyes of all the world were on them. If 
they did not do justice on so notorious a criminal 
they would never be trusted any more. It 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. . 97 



would be seen that the senators were not fit to 
administer the law. The law itself was on its 
trial. The provincials openly declared that if 
Verres was acquitted, the law under which their 
governors were liable to be accused had better 
be repealed. If no fear of a prosecution were 
hanging over them, they would be content with 
as much plunder as would satisfy their own 
wants. They would not need to extort as 
much more wherewith to bribe their judges. 
Then he called his witnesses. A marvelous 
array they were. " From the foot of Mount 
Taurus, from the shores of the Black Sea, from 
many cities of the Grecian mainland, from many 
islands of the ^gean, from every city and 
market-town of Sicily, deputations thronged to 
Rome. In the porticoes, and on the steps of 
the temples, in the area of the Forum, in the 
colonnade that surrounded it, on the housetops 
and on the overlooking declivities, were sta- 
tioned dense and eager crowds of impoverished 
heirs and their guardians, bankrupt tax-farmers 
and corn merchants, fathers bewailing their chil- 
dren carried, off to the pr^tor's harem, children 
mourning for their parents dead in the pr^tor's 



98 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



dungeons, Greek nobles whose descent was 
traced to Cecrops or Eurysthenes, or to the 
great Ionian and Minyan houses, and Phoeni- 
cians, whose ancestors had been priests of the 
Tyrian Melcarth, or claimed kindred with the 
Zidonian Jah.''^ Nine days were spent in hear- 
ing this mass of evidence. Hortensius was ut- 
terly overpowered by it. He had no opportu- 
nity for displaying his eloquence, or making a 
pathetic appeal for a noble oppressed by the 
hatred of the democracy. After a few feeble 
attempts at cross-examination, he practically 
abandoned the case. The defendant himself 
perceived that his position was hopeless. Be- 
fore the nine days, with their terrible impeach- 
ment, had come to an end he fled from Rome. 

The jury returned an unanimous verdict of 
guilty, and the prisoner was condemned to 
banishment and to pay a fine. The place of 
banishment (which he was apparently allowed 
to select outside certain limits) was Marseilles. 
The amount of the fine we do not know. It 
certainly was not enough to impoverish him. 

' Article in " Dictionary of Classical Biography and 
Mythology," by William Bodham Donne. 



A ROMAN MAGISTRATE. 



99 



Much of the money, and many of the works of 
art which he had stolen were left to him. These 
latter, by a singularly just retribution, proved 
his ruin in the end. After the death of Cicero, 
Antony permitted the exiles to return. Verres 
came with them, bringing back his treasures of 
art, and was put to death because they excited 
the cupidity of the masters of Rome. 



LofC. 



CHAPTER V, 



A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE. 

There were various courts at Rome for per 
sons accused of various crimes. One judge, 
for instance, used to try charges of poisoning ; 
another, charges of murder ; and, just as is the 
case among us, each judge had a jury, who 
gave their verdict on the evidence which they 
had heard. But this verdict was not, as with 
us, the verdict of the whole jury, given only if 
all can be induced to agree, but of the majority. 
Each juryman wrote his opinion on a little 
tablet of wood, putting A. {absolvOy I acquit 
if he thought the accused innocent, K. {con- 
demno, I condemn ") if he thought him guilty, 
and N. L. {non liquet, It is not clear") if the 
case seemed suspicious, though there was not 
enough evidence to convict. 

In the year 66 B.c, a very strange trial took 



A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE. loi 

place in the Court of Poison Cases. A certain 
Cluentius was accused of having poisoned his 
step-father, Oppianicus, and various other per- 
sons. Cicero, who was prator that year (the 
pr^tor was the magistrate next in rank to the 
consul), defended Cluentius, and told his client' s 

whole story. 

Cluentius and his step-father were both 
natives of Larinum, a town in Apulia, where 
there was a famous temple of Mars. A dispute 
about the property of this temple caused an 
open quarrel between the tv/o men, who had 
indeed been enemies for some years. Oppi- 
anicus took up the case of some slaves, who 
were called Servants of Mars, declaring that 
they were not slaves at all, but Roman citizens. 
This he did, it would seem, because he desired 
to annoy his fellow-townsmen, with whom he 
was very unpopular. The people of Larinum, 
who were very much interested in all that con- 
cerned the splendor of their temple services, 
resisted the claim, and asked Cluentius to plead 
their case. Cluentius consented. While the 
cause was going on, it occurred to Oppianicus 
to get rid of his opponent by poison. He 



102 ROMAIC i:iFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



employed an agent, and the agent put the 
matter into the hands of his freedman, a certain 
Scamander. Scamander tried to accomplish 
his object by bribing the slave of the physician 
who was attending Cluentius. The physician 
was a needy Greek, and his slave had probably 
hard and scanty fare ; but he was an honest 
man, and as clever as he was honest. He pre- 
tended to accept the offer, and arranged for a 
meeting. This done, he told the whole 
matter to his master the physician, and the 
physician told it again to his patient. Cluen- 
tius arranged that certain friends should be 
present in concealment at the interview be- 
tween the slave and his tempter. The villain 
came, and was seized with the poison and a 
packet of money, sealed with his master s seal, 
upon him. 

Cluentius, who had put up with many provo- 
cations from his mother s husband, now felt 
that his life was in danger, and determined to 
defend himself. He indicted Scamander for 
an attempt to poison. The man was found 
guilty. Scamander s patron (as they used to 
call a f reedman s old master) was next brought 



A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE. 



103 



to trial, and with the same result. Last of all 
Oppianicus, the chief criminal, was attacked. 
Scamander's trial had warned him of his 
danger, and he had labored to bring about 
the man's acquittal. One vote, and one only, 
he had contrived to secure. And to the giver 
of this vote, a needy and unprincipled member 
of the Senate, he now had recourse. He 
went, of course, with a large sum in his hand 

something about five thousand six hundred 

pounds of our money. With this the senator — 
Staienus by name — was to bribe sixteen out of 
the thirty-two jurymen. They were to have 
three hundred and fifty pounds apiece for their 
votes, and Staienus was to have as much for 
his own vote (which would give a majority), 
and something over for his trouble. Staienus 
conceived the happy idea of appropriating the 
whole, and he managed it in this way. He 
accosted a fellow-juror, whom he knew to be 
as unprincipled as himself. " Bulbus," he said, 
" you will help me in taking care that we shan't 
serve our country for nothing. " " You may 
count on me," said the man. Staienus went on, 
" The defendant has promised three hundred 



104 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



and fifty pounds to every juror who will vote 
' Not Guilty/ You know who will take the 
money. Secure them, and come again to me/' 
Nine days after, Bulbus came with beaming 
face to Staienus. I have got the sixteen in 
the matter you know of ; and now, where is the 
money?" ''He has played me false,'' replied 
the other ; the money is not forthcoming. As 
for myself, I shall certainly vote 'Guilty.' " 

The trial came to an end, and the verdict 
was to be given. The defendant claimed that 
it should be given by word of mouth, being 
anxious to know who had earned their money. 
Staienus and Bulbus were the first to vote. 
To the surprise of all, they voted "Guilty." 
Rumors too of foul play had spread about. 
The two circumstances caused some of the 
more respectable jurors to hesitate. In the end 
five voted for acquittal, ten said " Not Proven," 
and seventeen " Guilty." Oppianicus suffered 
nothing worse than banishment, a banishment 
which did not prevent him from living in 
Italy, and even in the neighborhood of Rome. 
The Romans, though they shed blood like 
water in their civil strife, were singularly lenient 



A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE. 



in their punishments. Not long afterwards he 
died. 

His widow saw in his death an opportunity 
of gratifying the unnatural hatred which she 
had long felt for her son Cluentius. She 
would accuse him of poisoning his step-father. 
Her first attempt failed completely. She 
subjected three slaves to torture, one of 
them her own, another belonged to the 
younger Oppianicus, a third the property of 
the physician who had attended the deceased 
in his last illness. But the cruelties and tor- 
tures extorted no confession from the men. At 
last the friends whom she had summoned to 
be present at the inquiry compelled her to 
desist. Three years afterwards she renewed 
the attempt. She had taken one of the three 
tortured slaves into high favor, and had 
established him as a physician at Larinum. 
The man committed an audacious robbery in 
his mistress's house, breaking open a chest and 
abstracting from it a quantity of silver coin and 
five pounds weight of gold. At the same time 
he murdered two of his fellow-slaves, and threw 
their bodies into the fish-pond. Suspicion fell 



io6 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



upon the missing slaves. But when the chest 
came to be closely examined, the opening was 
found to be of a very curious kind. A friend 
remembered that he had lately seen among the 
miscellaneous articles at an auction a circular 
saw which would have made just such an 
opening. It was found that this saw had been 
bought by the physician. He was now charged 
with the crime. Thereupon a young lad who 
had been his accomplice came forward and 
told the story. The bodies were found in the 
fish-pond. The guilty slave was tortured. 
He confessed the deed, and he also confessed, 
his mistress declared, that he had given poison 
to Oppianicus at the instance of Cluentius. 
No opportunity was given for further inquiry. 
His confession made, the man was immediately 
executed. Under strong compulsion from his 
step-mother, the younger Oppianicus now took 
up the case, and indicted Cluentius for murder. 
The evidence was very weak, little or nothing 
beyond the very doubtful confession spoken of 
above ; but then there was a very violent prej- 
udice against the accused. There had been a 
suspicion — perhaps more than a suspicion — of 



A ^REAT ROMAN CAUSE. 



107 



foul play in the trial which had ended in the 
condemnation of Oppianicus. The defendant, 
men said, might have attempted to bribe the 
jury, but the plaintiff had certainly done so. 
It would be a fine thing if he were to be pun- 
ished even by finding him guilty of a crime 
which he had not committed. 

In defending his client, Cicero relied as much 
upon the terrible list of crimes which had been 
proved against the dead Oppianicus as upon 
any thing else. Terrible indeed it was, as a 
few specimens from the catalogue will prove. 

Among the wealthier inhabitants of Larinum 
was a certain Dinaa, a childless widow. She 
had lost her eldest son in the Social War (the 
war carried on between Rome and her Italian 
allies), and had seen two others die of disease. 
Her only daughter, who had been married to 
Oppianicus, was also dead. Now came the 
unexpected news that her eldest son was still 
alive. He had been sold into slavery, and was 
still working among a gang of laborers on a 
farm in Gaul. The poor woman called her 
kinsfolk together and implored them to under- 
take the task of recovering him. At the same 



io8 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OP CICERO. 



time she made a will, leaving the bulk of her 
property to her daughters son, the younger 
Oppianicus, but providing for the missing man 
a legacy of between three and four thousand 
pounds. The elder Oppianicus was not dis- 
posed to see so large a sum go out of the 
family. Dinaea fell ill, and he brought her his 
own physician. The patient refused the man s 
services ; they had been fatal, she said, to all 
her kinsfolk. Oppianicus then contrived to in- 
troduce to her a traveling quack from Ancona. 
He had bribed the man with about seventeen 
pounds of our money to administer a deadly 
drug. The fee was large, and the fellow was 
expected to take some pains with the business ; 
but he was in a hurry ; he had many markets 
to visit ; and he gave a single dose which there 
was no need to repeat. 

Meanwhile Dinseas kinsfolk had sent two 
agents to make inquiries for the missing son. 
But Oppianicus had been beforehand with 
them. He had bribed the man who had 
brought the first news, had learned where he 
was to be found, and had caused him to be 
assassinated. The agents wrote to their 



A GREA T ROMAN CA USE. 109 



employers at Larinum, saying that the object 
of their search could not be found. Oppianicus 
having undoubtedly tampered with the person 
from whom information was to be obtained. 
This letter excited great indignation at Lari- 
num ; and one of the family publicly declared 
in the market-place that he should hold 
Oppianicus (who happened to be present) re- 
sponsible if any harm should be found to have 
happened to the missing man. A few days 
afterwards the agents themselves returned. 
They had found the man, but he was dead. 
Oppianicus dared not face the burst of rage 
which this news excited, and fled from Larinum. 
But he was not at the end of his resources. 
The Civil War between Sulla and the party 
of Marius (for Marius himself was now dead) 
was raging, and Oppianicus fled to the camp 
of Metellus Pius, one of Sulla's lieutenants. 
There he represented himself as one who had 
suffered for the party. Metellus had himself 
fought in the Social War, and fought against the 
side to which the murdered prisoner belonged. 
It was therefore easy to persuade him that the 
man had deserved his fate, and that his friends 



110 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



were unworthy persons and dangerous to the 
commonweahh. Oppianicus returned to Lari- 
num with an armed force, deposed the magis- 
trates whom the towns-people had chosen, 
produced Sulla's mandate for the appointment 
of himself and three of his creatures in their 
stead, as well as for the execution of four 
persons particularly obnoxious to him. These 
four were, the man who had publicly threatened 
him, two of his kinsfolk, and one of the in- 
struments of his own villainies, whom he now 
found it convenient to get out of the way. 

The story of the crimes of Oppianicus, of 
which only a small part has been given, having 
been finished, Cicero related the true circum- 
stances of his death. After his banishment he 
had wandered about for a while shunned by 
all his acquaintances. Then he had taken up 
his quarters in a farmhouse in the Falernian 
country. From these he was driven away by 
a quarrel with the farmer, and removed to a 
small lodging which he had hired outside the 
walls of Rome. Not long afterwards he fell 
from his horse, and received a severe injury in 
his side. His health was already weak, fever 



A GREA T ROMAN CA USE. 1 1 1 



came on, he was carried into the city and died 
after a few days' illness. 

Besides the charge of poisoning Oppianicus 
there were others that had to be briefly dealt 
with. One only of these needs to be men- 
tioned. Cluentius, it was said, had put poison 
into a cup of honey wine, with the intention of 
giving it to the younger Oppianicus. The 
occasion, it was allowed, was the young man's 
wedding-breakfast, to which, as was the custom 
at Larinum, a large company had been invited. 
The prosecutor affirmed that one of the bride- 
groom's friends had intercepted the cup on its 
way, drunk off its contents, and instantly ex- 
pired. The answer to this was complete. The 
young man had not instantly expired. On the 
contrary, he had died after an illness of several 
days, and this illness had had a different cause. 
He was already out of health when became to 
the breakfast, and he had made himself worse 
by eating and drinking too freely, " as," says 
the orator, " young men will do." He then 
called a witness to whom no one could object, 
the father of the deceased. " The least sus- 
picion of the guilt of Cluentius would have 



ri2 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



brought him as a witness against him. Instead 
of doing this he gives him his support. Read," 
said Cicero to the clerk, ''read his evidence. 
And you, sir,'' turning to the father, stand up 
a while, if you please, and submit to the pain 
of hearing what I am obliged to relate. I will 
say no more about the case. Your conduct 
has been admirable ; you would not allow your 
own sorrow to involve an innocent man in the 
deplorable calamity of a false accusation." 

Then came the story of the cruel and shame- 
ful plot which the mother had contrived against 
her son. Nothing would content this wicked 
woman but that she must herself journey to 
Rome to give all the help that she could to th^ 
prosecution. And what a journey this was ! " 
cried Cicero. I live near some of the towns 
near which she passed, and I have heard from 
many witnesses what happened. Vast crowds 
came to see her. Men, ay, and women too, 
groaned aloud as she passed by. Groaned at 
what ? Why, that from the distant town of 
Larinum, from the very shore of the Upper 
Sea, a woman was coming with a great retinue 
and heavy money-bags, coming with the single 



A GREA T ROMAN CA USE. 1 1 3 



object of bringing about the ruin of a son who 
was being tried for his life. In all those crowds 
there was not a man who did not think that 
every spot on which she set her foot needed to 
be purified, that the very earth, which is the 
mother of us all, was defiled by the presence of 
a mother so abominably wicked. There was 
not a single town in which she was allowed to 
stay; there was not an inn of all the many 
upon that road where the host did not shun 
the contagion of her presence. And indeed 
she preferred to trust herself to solitude and 
to darkness rather than to any city or hostelry. 
And now," said Cicero, turning to the woman, 
who was probably sitting in court, " does she 
think that we do not all know her schemes, 
her intrigues, her purposes from day to day ? 
Truly we know exactly to whom she has gone, 
to whom she has promised money, whose in- 
tegrity she has endeavored to corrupt with her 
bribes. Nay, more : we have heard all about 
the things which she supposes to be a secret, 
her nightly sacrifice, her wicked prayers, her 
abominable vows." 

He then turned to the son, whom he would 



114 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



have the jury believe was as admirable as the 
mother was vile. He had certainly brought 
together a wonderful array of witnesses to 
character. From Larinum every grown-up 
man that had the strength to make the journey 
had come to Rome to support their fellow- 
townsman. The town was left to the care of 
women and children. With these witnesses had 
come, bringing a resolution of the local senate 
full of the praises of the accused, a deputation 
of the senators. Cicero turned to the depu- 
tation and begged them to stand up while the 
resolution was being-read. They stood up and 
burst into tears, which indeed are much more 
common among the people of the south than 
among us, and of which no one sees any reason 
to be ashamed. You see these tears, gentle- 
men," cried the orator to the jury. You may 
be sure, from seeing them, that every member 
of the senate was in tears also when they 
passed this resolution." Nor was it only Lari- 
num, but all the chief Samnite towns that had 
sent their most respected citizens to give their 
evidence for Cluentius. Few," said Cicero, 
" I think, are loved by me as much as he is 
loved by all these friends." 



A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE. 



"5 



Cluentius was acquitted. Cicero is said to 
have boasted afterwards that he had bhnded 
the eyes of the jury. Probably his client had 
bribed the jury m the trial of his step-father. 
That was certainly the common belief, which 
indeed went so far as to fix the precise sum 
which he paid. " How many miles is your farm 
from Rome?" was asked of one of the witnesses 
at a trial connected with the case. " Less than 
fifty-three," he replied. " Exactly the sum," 
was the general cry from the spectators. The 
point of the joke is in the fact that the same 
word stood in Latin for the thousand paces 
which made a mile and the thousand coins by 
which sums of money were commonly reck- 
oned. Oppianicus had paid forty thousand 
for an acquittal, and Cluentius outbid him with 
fifty thousand (" less than fifty-three ") to se- 
cure a verdict of guilty. But whatever we may 
think of the guilt or innocence of Cluentius, 
there can be no doubt that the cause in which 
Cicero defended him was one of the most in- 
teresting ever tried in Rome. 



CHAPTER VL 



COU'-TTRY LIFE. 

A Roman of even moderate wealth — for Cicero 
was far from being one of the richest men of 
his time — commonly possessed more country- 
houses than belong even to the wealthiest of 
English nobles. One such house at least 
Cicero inherited from his father. It was about 
three miles from Arpinum, a little town in 
that hill country of the Sabines which was the 
proverbial seat of a temperate and frugal race, 
and which Cicero describes in Homeric phrase 
as 

Rough but a kindly nurse of men.** 

In his grandfather's time it had been a plain 
farmhouse, of the kind that had satisfied the 
simpler manners of former days — the days 
when Consuls and Dictators were content, 



COUNTRY LIFE. 



117 



their time of office ended, to plow their own 
fields and reap their own harvests. Cicero 
was born within its walls, for the primitive 
fashion of family life still prevailed, and the 
married son continued to live in his father's 
house. After the old man's death, when the 
old-fashioned frugality gave way to a more 
sumptuous manner of life, the house was 
greatly enlarged, one of the additions being 
a library, a room of <vhich the grandfather, 
who thought that his contemporaries were like 
Syrian slaves, "the more Greek they knew 
the greater knaves they were," had never felt 
the want ; but in which his son, especially in 
his later days, spent most of his time. The 
garden and grounds were especially delightful, 
the most charming spot of all being an island 
formed by the little stream Fibrenus. A 
description put into the mouth of Quintus, 
the younger son of the house, thus depicts it : 
" I have never seen a more pleasant spot. 
Fibrenus here divides his stream into two of 
equal size, and so washes either side. Flow- 
ing rapidly by he joins his waters again, having 
compassed just as much ground as makes a 



1 18 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



convenient place for our literary discussions. 
This done he hurries on, just as if the pro* 
viding of such a spot had been his only office 
and function, to fall into the Liris. Then, like 
one adopted into a noble family, he loses his 
own obscurer name. The Liris indeed he 
makes much colder. A colder stream than this 
indeed I never touched, though I have seen 
many. I can scarce bear to dip my foot in it. 
You remember how Plato makes Socrates dip 
his foot in Ilissus." Atticus too is loud in his 
praises. This, you know, is my first time of 
coming here, and I feel that I cannot admire 
it enough. As to the splendid villas which 
one often sees, with their marble pavements 
and gilded ceilings, I despise them. And their 
water-courses, to which they give the fine 
names of Nile or Euripus, who would not 
laugh at them when he sees your streams? 
When we want rest and delight for the mind 
it is to nature that we must come. Once I 
used to wonder — for I never thought that there 
was any thing but rocks and hills in the place — ■ 
that you took such pleasure in the spot. But 
now I marvel that when you are away from 



COUNTRY LIFE. 



119 



Rome you care to be any where but here/' 
Well," replied Cicero, when I get away 
from town for several days at a time, I do 
prefer this place ; but this I can seldom do. 
And indeed I love it, not only because it is so 
pleasant, so healthy a resort, but also because 
it is my native land, mine and my father s too, 
and because I live here among the associa- 
tions of those that have gone before me." 

Other homes he purchased at various times 
of his life, as his means permitted. The situa- 
tion of one of them, at Formise near Cape 
Caista, was particularly agreeable to him, for 
he loved the sea ; it amused him as it had 
amused, he tells us, the noble friends, Scipio 
and Lselius, before him, to pick up pebbles on 
the shore. But this part of the coast was a 
fashionable resort. Chance visitors were com- 
mon ; and there were many neighbors, some 
of whom were far too liberal of their visits. 
He writes to Atticus on one occasion from his 
Formian villa : As to composition, to which 
you are always urging me, it is absolutely im- 
possible. It is a public-hall that I have here, 
not a country-house, such a crowd of people is 



ISO ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



there at Formiae. As to most of them nothing 
need be said. After ten o'clock they cease to 
trouble me. But my nearest neighbor is 
Arrius. The man absolutely lives with me, 
says that he has given up the idea of going to 
Rome because he wants to talk philosophy with 
me. And then, on the other side, there is 
Sebosus, Catulus' friend, as you will remember. 
Now what am I to do ? I would certainly be 
off to Arpinum if I did not expect to see you 
here." In the next letter he repeats the com- 
plaints : " Just as I am sitting down to write 
in comes our friend Sebosus. I had not time 
to give an inward groan, when Arrius says, 
' Good morning.' And this is going away from 
Rome ! I will certainly be off to 

' My native hills, the cradle of my race.' " 

Still, doubtless, there was a sweetness, the 
sweetness of being famous and sought after, 
even in these annoyances. He never ceased to 
pay occasional visits to Formiae. It was a 
favorite resort of his family ; and it was there 
that he spent the last days of his life. 



COUNTRY LIFE. 



But the country-house which he loved best 
of all was his villa at Tusculum, a Latin town 
lying on the slope of Mount Algidus, at such 
a height above the sea^ as would make a 
notable hill in England. Here had lived in 
an earlier generation Crassus, the orator after 
whose model the young Cicero had formed his 
own eloquence ; and Catulus, who shared with 
Marius the glory of saving Rome from the bar- 
barians ; and Casar, an elder kinsman of the 
Dictator. Cicero's own house had belonged to 
Sulla, and its walls were adorned with frescoes 
of that great soldier's victories. For neighbors 
he had the wealthy Lucullus, and the still more 
wealthy Crassus, one of the three who ruled 
Rome when it could no longer rule itself, and, 
for a time at least, Quintus, his brother. 
" This," he writes to his friend Atticus, " is 
the one spot in which I can^^ get some rest 
from all my toils and troubles." 

Though Cicero often speaks of this house of 
his, he nowhere describes its general arrange- 
ments. We shall probably be not far wrong if 
we borrow our idea of this from the letter in 



* 2200 feet. 



122 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



which the younger Pliny tells a friend about 
one of his own country seats. 

The courtyard in front is plain without 
being- mean. From this you pass into a small 
but cheerful space inclosed by colonnades in the 
shape of the letter D. Between these there is 
a passage into an inner covered court, and out 
of this again into a handsome hall, which has 
on every side folding doors or windows equally 
large. On the left hand of this hall lies a large 
drawing-room, and beyond that a second of a 
smaller size, which has one window to the 
rising and another to the setting sun. Adjoin- 
ing this is another room of a semicircular shape, 
the windows of which are so arranged as to get 
the sun all through the day : in the walls are 
bookcases containing a collection of authors 
who cannot be read too often. Out of this is 
a bedroom which can be warmed with hot air. 
The rest of this side of the house is appro- 
priated to the use of the slaves and freedmen ; 
yet most of the rooms are good enough to put 
my guests into. In the opposite wing is a 
most elegant bedroom, another which can be 
used both as bedroom and sitting-room, and a 



COUNTRY LIFE. 



123 



third which has an ante-room of its own, and is 
so high as to be cool in summer, and with walls 
so thick that it is warm in winter. Then comes 
the bath with its cooling room, its hot room, 
and its dressing chamber. And not far from 
this again the tennis court, which gets the 
warmth of the afternoon sun, and a tower 
which commands an extensive view of the 
country round. Then there is a granary and 
a store-room." 

This was probably a larger villa than Cicero's, 
though it was itself smaller than another which 
Pliny describes. We must make an allow- 
ance for the increase in wealth and luxury 
which a century and a half had brought. Still 
we may get some idea from it of Cicero's 
country-house, one point of resemblance cer- 
tainly being that there was but one floor. 

What Cicero says at)Out his " Tusculanum " 
chiefly refers to its furnishing and decoration, 
and is to be found for the most part in his 
letters to Atticus. Atticus lived for many years 
in Athens and had therefore opportunities of 
buying works of art and books which did not 
fall in the way of the busy lawyer and statesman 



124 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



of Rome. But the room which in Cicero's eyes 
was specially important was one which we may 
call the lecture-room, and he is delighted when 
his friend was able to procure some appropriate 
ornaments for it. Your Hermathena'' he 
writes (the Hermathena was a composite statue, 
or rather a double bust upon a pedestal, with 
the heads of Hermes and Athene, the Roman 
Mercury and Minerva) pleases me greatly. It 
stands so prettily that the whole lecture-room 
looks like a votive chapel of the deity. I am 
greatly obliged to you." He returns to the 
subject in another letter. Atticus had prob- 
ably purchased for him another bust of the 
same kind. What you write about the Her- 
mathena pleases me greatly. It is a most 
appropriate ornament for my own little ' seat 
of learning.' Hermes is suitable every where, 
and Minerva is the special emblem of a lecture- 
room. I should be glad if you would, as you 
suggest, find as many more ornaments of the 
same kind for the place. As for the statues 
that you sent me before, I have not seen them. 
They are at my house at Formiae, whither I 
am just now thinking of going. I shall remove 



COUNTRY LIFE. 125 



them all to my place at Tusculum. If ever I 
shall find myself with more than enough for 
this I shall begin to ornament the other. Pray 
keep your books. Don't give up the hope 
that I may be able to make them mine. If I can 
only do this I shall be richer than Crassus." 
And, again, " If you can find any lecture-room 
ornaments do not neglect to secure them. My 
Tusculum house is so delightful to me that it is 
only when I get there that I seem to be satis- 
fied with myself." In another letter we hear 
something about the prices. H e has paid about 
one hundred and eighty pounds for some 
statues from Megara which his friend had 
purchased for him. At the same time he 
thanks him by anticipation for some busts 
of Hermes, in which the pedestals were 
of marble from Pentelicus, and the heads of 
bronze. They had not come to hand when he 
next writes : " I am looking for them," he says, 
" most anxiously ; " and he again urges diligence 
in looking for such things. " You may trust 
the length of my purse. This is my special 
fancy." Shortly after Atticus has found another 
kind of statue,double busts of Hermes and Her^ 



126 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 



cules, the god of strength ; and Cicero is urgent 
to have them for his lecture-room. All the same 
he does not forget the books, for which he is 
keeping his odds and ends of income, his little 
vintages,'' as he calls them — possibly the money 
received from a small vineyard attached to his 
pleasure-grounds. Of books, however, he had 
an ample supply close at home, of which he 
could make as much use as be pleased, the 
splendid library which Lucullus had collected. 

When I was at my house in Tusculum," he 
writes in one of his treatises, happening to 
want to make use of some books in the library 
of the young Lucullus, I went to his villa, to 
take them out myself, as my custom was. 
Coming there I found Cato (Cato was the lad s 
uncle and guardian), of whom, however, then 
I knew nothing, sitting in the library absolutely 
surrounded with books of the Stoic writers on 
philosophy.'' 

When Cicero was banished, the house at 
Tusculum shared the fate of the rest of his 
property. The building was destroyed. The 
furniture, and with it the books and works of art 
so diligently collected, were stolen or sold. Cicero 



COUNTRY LIFE. 



127 



thought,and was probably right in thinking, that 
the Senate dealt very meanly with him when 
they voted him something between four and 
five thousand pounds as compensation for his 
loss in this respect. For his house at Formiae 
they gave him half as much. We hear of his 
rebuilding the house. He had advertised the 
contract, he tells us in the same letter in which 
he complains of the insufficient compensation. 
Some of his valuables he recovered, but we hear 
no more of collecting. He had lost heart for it, 
as men will when such a disaster has happened to 
them. He was growing older too, and the times 
were growing more and more troublous. Possi- 
bly money was not so plentiful with him as it 
had been in earlier days. But we have one noble 
monument of the man connected with the 
second of his two Tusculum houses. He makes 
it the scene of the " Discussions of Tusculum," 
one of the last of the treatises in the writing 
of which he found consolation for private and 
public sorrows. He describes himself as resort- 
ing in the afternoon to his " Academy," and 
there discussing how the wise man may rise 
superior to the fear of death, to pain and to 



128 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



sorrow, how he may rule his passions, and find 
contentment in virtue alone. If it seems,'' 
he says, summing up the first of these discus- 
sions, if it seems the clear bidding of God 
that we should quit this life [he seems to be 
speaking of suicide, which appeared to a Roman 
to be, under certain circumstances, a laudable 
act], let us obey gladly and thankfully. Let us 
consider that we are being loosed from prison, 
and released from chains, that we may either 
find our way back to a home that is at once 
everlasting and manifestly our own, or at least 
be quit forever of all sensation and trouble. 
If no such bidding come to us, let us at least 
cherish such a temper that we may look on 
that day so dreadful to others as full of bless- 
ing to us ; and let us look on nothing that 
is ordered for us either by the everlasting gods 
or by nature, our common mother, as an evil. 
It is not by some random chance that we have 
been created. There is beyond all doubt some 
mighty Power which watches over the race of 
man, which does not produce a creature whose 
doom it is, after having exhausted all other 
woes, to fall at last into the unending woe of 



COUNTRY LIFE. 



129 



death. Rather let us believe that we have in 
death a haven and refuge prepared for us. I 
would that we might sail thither with wide- 
spread sails ; if not, if contrary winds shall 
blow us back, still we must needs reach, though 
it may be somewhat late, the haven where we 
would be. And as for the fate which is the 
fate of all, how can it be the unhappiness of 
one?" 



\ 



CHAPTER VIL 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY. 

Sergius Catiline belonged to an ancient family 
which had fallen into poverty. In the evil 
days of Sulla, when the nobles recovered the 
power which they had lost, and plundered and 
murdered their adversaries, he had shown 
himself as cruel and as wicked as any of his 
fellows. Like many others he had satisfied 
grudges of his own under pretense of servmg 
his party, and had actually killed his brother- 
in-law with his own hand. These evil deeds 
and his private character, which was of the 
very worst, did not hinder him from rising to 
high offices in the State. He was made first 
aedile, then praetor, then governor of Africa, 
a province covering the region which now bears 
the names of Tripoli and Tunis. At the end 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY. 



131 



of his year of government he returned to Rome, 
intending to become a candidate for the consul- 
ship. In this he met with a great disappoint- 
ment. He was indicted for misgovernment in 
his province, and as the law did not permit any 
one who had such a charge hanging over him 
to stand for any pubUc office, he was compelled 
to retire. But he soon found, or fancied that 
he had found, an opportunity of revenging him- 
self. The two new consuls were found guilty 
of bribery, and were compelled to resign. One 
of them, enraged at his disgrace, made com- 
mon cause with Catiline. A plot, in which not 
a few powerful citizens were afterwards sus- 
pected with more or less reason of having 
joined, was formed. It was arranged that the 
consuls should be assassinated on the first day 
of the new year ; the day, that is, on which they 
were to enter on their office. But a rumor 
of some impending danger got about ; on the 
appointed day the new consuls appeared with 
a sufficient escort, and the conspirators agreed 
to postpone the execution of their scheme till 
an early day in February. This time the 
secret was better kept, but the impatience of 



132 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 



Catiline hindered the plot from being carried 
out It had been arranged that he should take 
his place in front of the senate-house, and 
give to the hired band of assassins the signal 
to begin. This signal he gave before the 
whole number was assembled. The few that 
were present had not the courage to act, and 
the opportunity was lost. 

The trial for misgovernment ended in an 
acquittal, purchased, it was said, by large bribes 
given to the jurymen and even to the prose- 
cutor, a certain Clodius, of v/hom we shall 
hear again, and shall find to have been not one 
whit better than Catiline himself. A second 
trial, this time for misdeeds committed in the 
days of Sulla, ended in the same way. Catiline 
now resolved on following another course of 
action. He would take up the character of a 
friend of the people. He had the advantage 
of being a noble, for men thought that he was 
honest when they saw him thus turn against 
his own order, and, as it seemed, against his 
own interests. And indeed there was much 
that he could say, and say with perfect truth, 
against the nobles. They were corrupt and 



A GREA T CONSPIRACY. 



133 



profligate beyond all bearing. They sat on 
juries and gave false verdicts for money. They 
went out to govern provinces, showed them- 
selves horribly cruel and greedy, and then 
came home to be acquitted by men who had 
done or hoped to do the very same things 
themselves. People listened to Catiline when 
he spoke against such doings, without remem- 
bering that he was just as bad himself. He 
had too, just the reputation for strength and 
courage that was likely to make him popular. 
He had never been a soldier, but he was 
known to be very brave, and he had a remark- 
able power of enduring cold and hunger and 
hardships of every kind. On the strength of 
the favor which he thus gained, he stood 
again for the consulship. In anticipation of 
being elected, he gathered a number of men 
about him, unsuccessful and discontented like 
himself, and unfolded his plans. All debts 
were to be wiped out, and wealthy citizens 
were to be put to death and their property to 
be divided. It was hoped that the consuls at 
home, and two at least of the armies in the 
provinces, would support the movement. The 



134 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DAYS OF CICERO. 



first failure was that Catiline was not elected 
consul, Cicero being chosen unanimously, with 
Antonius, who had a small majority over 
Catiline, for his colleague. Enraged at his want 
of success, the latter now proceeded to greater 
lengths than ever. He actually raised troops 
in various parts of Italy, but especially in 
Etruria, which one Manlius, an old officer in 
Sulla s army, commanded. He then again be- 
came a candidate for the consulship, resolving 
first to get rid of Cicero, who, he found, met 
and thwarted him at every turn. Happily for 
Rome these designs were discovered through 
the weakness of one of his associates. This 
man told the secret to a lady, with whom he 
was in love, and the lady, dismayed at the 
boldness and wickedness of the plan, commu- 
nicated all she knew to Cicero. 

Not knowing that he was thus betrayed, 
Catiline set about ridding hrmself of his great 
antagonist. Nor did the task seem difficult. 
The hours both of business and of pleasure in 
Rome were what we should think inconveni- 
ently early. Thus a Roman noble or states- 
man would receive in the first hours of the 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY. 



morning the calls of ceremony or friendship 
which it is our custom to pay in the afternoon. 
It would sometimes happen that early visitors 
would find the great man not yet risen. In 
these cases he would often receive them in 
bed. This was probably the habit of Cicero, 
a courteous, kindly man, always anxious to be 
popular, and therefore easy of access. On this 
habit the conspirators counted. Two of their 
number, one of them a knight, the other a 
senator, presented themselves at his door 
shortly after sunrise on the seventh of Novem- 
ber. They reckoned on finding him, not in 
the great hall of his mansion, surrounded by 
friends and dependents, but in his bed-chamber. 
But the consul had received warning of their 
coming, and they were refused admittance. 
The next day he called a meeting of the Sen- 
ate in the temple of Jupiter the Stayer, which 
was supposed to be the safest place where they 
could assemble. 

To this meeting Catiline, a member in right 
of having filled high offices of state, himself 
ventured to come. A tall, stalwart man, mani- 
festly of great power of body and mind, but 



136 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



with a face pale and wasted by excess, and his 
eyes haggard and bloodshot, he sat alone in 
the midst of a crowded house. No man had 
greeted him when he entered, and when he 
took his place on the benches allotted to 
senators who had filled the office of consul, 
all shrank from him. Then Cicero rose in 
his place. He turned directly and addressed 
his adversary. " How long, Catiline," he cried, 
" will you abuse our patience ? " How had he 
dared to come to that meeting ? Was it not 
enough for him to know how all the city was 
on its guard against him ; how his fellow- 
senators shrank from him as men shrink from 
a pestilence ? If he was still alive, he owed 
it to the forbearance of those against whom 
he plotted ; and this forbearance would last so 
long, and so long only, as to allow every one to 
be convinced of his guilt. For the present, he 
was suffered to live, but to live guarded and 
watched and incapable of mischief. Then the 
speaker related every detail of the conspiracy. 
He knew not only every thing that the accom- 
plices had intended to do, but the very days 
that had been fixed for doing it. Overwhelmed 



A GREA T CONSPIRA C V. 



137 



by this knowledge of his plans, Catiline scarcely 
attempted a defense. He said in a humble 
voice, " Do not think, Fathers, that I, a noble 
of Rome, I who have done, myself, whose 
ancestors have done much good to this city, 
wish to see it in ruins, while this consul, a mere 
lodger in the place, would save it." He would 
have said more, but the whole assembly burst 
into cries of " Traitor ! Traitor ! " and drowned 
his voice. "My enemies," he cried, "are 
driving me to destruction. But look ! if you 
set my house on fire, I will put it out with a 
general ruin." And he rushed out of the Senate. 
Nothing, he saw, could be done in Rome ; 
every point was guarded against him. Late 
that same night he left the city, committing 
the management of affairs to Cethegus and 
Lentulus, and promising to return before long 
with an army at his back. Halting awhile on 
his road, he wrote letters to some of the chief 
senators, in which he declared that for the sake 
of the public peace he should give up the 
struggle with his enemies and quietly retire to 
Marseilles. What he really did was to make 
his way to the camp of Manlius, where he 



138 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



assumed the usual state of a regular military 
command. The Senate, on hearing of these 
doings, declared him to be an outlaw. The 
consuls were to raise an army ; Antonius was 
to march against the enemy, and Cicero to 
protect the city. 

Meanwhile the conspirators left behind in 
Rome had been busy. One of the tribes of 
Gaul had sent deputies to the Capitol to obtain 
redress for injuries of which they complained. 
The men had effected little or nothing. The 
Senate neglected them. The help of officials 
could only be purchased by heavy bribes. 
They were now heavily in debt both on their 
own account and on account of their state, and 
Lentulus conceived the idea of taking advan- 
tage of their needs. One of his freedmen, who 
had been a trader in Gaul, could speak the 
language, and knew several of the deputies, 
opened negotiations with them by his patron s 
desire. They told him the tale of their wrongs. 
They could see, they said, no way out of their 
difficulties. Behave like men,'' he answered, 
and I will show you a way." He then re- 
vealed to them the existence of the conspiracy, 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY. 139 



explained its objects, and enlarged upon the 
hopes of success. While he and his friends 
were busy at Rome, they were to return to 
Gaul and rouse their fellow-tribesmen to revolt. 

There was something tempting in the offer, 
and the deputies doubted long whether they 
should not accept it. In the end prudence 
prevailed. To join the conspiracy and to rebel 
would be to run a terrible risk for very doubt- 
ful advantages. On the other hand they might 
make sure of a speedy reward by telling all 
they knew to the authorities. This was the 
course on which they resolved, and they went 
without loss of time to a Roman noble.who was 
the hereditary " patron " of their tribe. The 
patron in his turn communicated the intel- 
ligence to Cicero. Cicero's instructions were 
that the deputies should pretend to agree to 
the proposals which had been made to them, 
and should ask for a written agreement which 
they might show to their countrymen at home. 
An agreement was drawn up, signed by Len- 
tulus and two of his fellow-conspirators, and 
handed over to the Gauls, who now made 
preparations to return to their country. Cicero 



I40 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

himself tells us in the speech which he delivered 
next day in the Forum the story of what 
followed. 

I summoned to my presence two of the 
praetors on whose courage I knew I could rely, 
put the whole matter before them, and unfolded 
my own plans. As it grew dusk they made 
their way unobserved to the Mulvian Bridge, 
and posted themselves with their attendants 
(they had some trusty followers of their own, 
and I had sent a number of picked swordsmen 
from my own body-guard), in two divisions in 
houses on either side of the bridge. About 
two o'clock in the morning the Gauls and their 
train, which was very numerous, began to cross 
the bridge. Our men charged them ; swords 
were drawn on both sides ; but before any 
blood was shed the praetors appeared on the 
scene, and all was quiet. The Gauls handed 
over to them the letters which they had upon 
them with their seals unbroken. These and 
the deputies themselves were brought to my 
house. The day was now beginning to dawn. 
Immediately I sent for the four men whom I 
knew to be the principal conspirators. They 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY. 



141 



came suspecting nothing, Lentulus, who had 
been up late the night before writing the 
letters, being the last to present himself. 
Some distinguished persons who had assembled 
at my house wished me to open the letters 
before laying them before the Senate. I f their 
contents were not what I suspected I should 
be blamed for having given a great deal of 
trouble to no purpose. I refused in so impor- 
tant a matter to act on my own responsibility. 
No one, I was sure, would accuse me of being 
too careful when the safety of Rome was at 
stake. I called a meeting of the Senate, and 
took care that the attendance should be very 
large. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of the 
Gauls, I sent a prator to the house of Cethegus 
to seize all the weapons that he could find. H e 
brought away a great number of daggers and 
swords. 

" The Senate being now assembled, I brought 
Vulturcius, one of the conspirators, into the 
House, promised him a public pardon, and 
bade him tell all he knew without fear. As 
soon as the man could speak, for he was 
terribly frightened, he said, ' I was taking a 



142 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



letter and a message from Lentulusto Catiline. 
Catiline was instructed to bring his forces up 
to the walls of the city. They meanwhile 
would set it on fire in various quarters, as 
had been arranged, and begin a general mas- 
sacre. He was to intercept the fugitives, and 
thus effect a junction with his friends within 
the walls.' I next brought the Gauls into the 
House. Their story was as follows. ' Lentulus 
and two of his companions gave us letters to 
our nation. We were instructed to send our 
cavalry into Italy with all speed. They would 
find a force of infantry. Lentulus told us how 
he had learned from Sibylline books that he was 
that third Cornelius " who was the fated ruler 
of Rome. The two that had gone before him 
were Cicero and Sulla. The year too was the 
one which was destined to see the ruin of the 
city, for it was the tenth after the acquittal of 
the Vestal Virgins, the twentieth after the 
burning of the Capitol. After this Cethegus 
and the others had a dispute about the time 
for setting the city on fire. Lentulus and others 
wished to have it done on the feast of Saturn 
(December 1 7th). Cethegus thought that this 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY. 



143 



was putting it off too long.' I then had the 
letter brought in. First I showed Cethegus 
his seal. He acknowledged it. I cut the 
string. I read the letter. It was written in 
his own handwriting and was to this effect : 
he assured the Senate and people of the Gauls 
that he would do what he had promised to 
their deputies, and begged them on the other 
hand to perform what their deputies had under- 
taken. Cethegus, who had accounted for the 
weapons found in his house by declaring that 
he had always been a connoisseur in such things, 
was overwhelmed by hearing his letter read, 
and said nothing. 

" Manlius next acknowledged his seal and 
handwriting. A letter from him much to the 
same effect was read. He confessed his guilt. 
I then showed Lentulus his letter, and asked 
him, 'Do you acknowledge the seal?' 'I 
do,' he answered. 'Yes,' said I, ' it is a 
well-known device, the likeness of a great 
patriot, your grandfather. The mere sight of 
it ought to have kept you from such a crime 
as this.' His letter was then read. I then 
asked him whether he had any explanation to 



144 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

give. ' I have nothing to say/ was his first 
answer. After a while he rose and put some 
questions to the Gauls. They answered him 
without any hesitation, and asked him in reply 
whether he had not spoken to them about 
the Sibylline books. What followed was the 
strangest proof of the power of conscience. H e 
might have denied every thing, but he did what 
no one expected, he confessed ; all his abilities, 
all his power of speech deserted him. Vul- 
turcius then begged that the letter which he 
was carrying from Lentulus to Catiline should 
be brought in and opened. Lentulus was 
greatly agitated ; still he acknowledged the seal 
and the handwriting to be his. The letter, 
which was unsigned, was in these words : You 
will know who I am by the messenger whom 1 
send to you. Bear yourself as a man. Think 
of the position in which you now are, and 
consider what you must now do. Collect all the 
help you can, even though it be of the meanest 
kind. In a word, the case was made out 
against them all not only by the seals, the 
letters, the handwritings, but by the faces of the 
men, their downcast look, their silence. Their 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY. 



US 



confusion, their stealthy looks at each other 
were enough, if there had been no other proof, 
to convict them." 

Lentulus was compelled to resign his office of 
prffitor. He and the other conspirators were 
handed over to certain of the chief citizens, who 
were bound to keep them in safe custody and 
to produce them when they were called for. 

The lower orders of the capital, to whom 
Catiline and his companions had made liberal 
promises, and who regarded his plans, or 
what were supposed to be his plans, with con- 
siderable favor, were greatly moved by Cicero's 
account of what had been discovered. No one 
could expect to profit by conflagration and 
massacre ; and they were disposed to take 
sides with the party of order. Still there were 
elements of danger, as there always are in great 
cities. It was known that a determined effort 
would be made by the clients of Lentulus, whose 
family was one of the noblest and wealthiest in 
Rome, to rescue him from custody. At the 
same time several of the most powerful nobles 
were strongly suspected of favoring the revo- 
lutionists. Crassus, in particular, the wealthiest 



146 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

man in Rome, was openly charged with com- 
plicity. A certain Tarquinius was brought 
before the Senate, having been, it was said, 
arrested when actually on his way to Catiline. 
Charged to tell all he knew, he gave the same 
account as had been given by other witnesses 
of the preparations for fire and massacre, and 
added that he was the bearer of a special 
message from Crassus to Catiline, to the effect 
that he was not to be alarmed by the arrest of 
Lentulus and the others ; only he must march 
upon the city without delay, and so rescue the 
prisoners and restore the courage of those who 
were still at large. The charge seemed in- 
credible to most of those who heard it. Crassus 
had too much at stake to risk himself in such 
perilous ventures. Those who believed it were 
afraid to press it against so powerful a citizen ; 
and there were many who were under too great 
obligations to the accused to allow it, whatever 
its truth or falsehood, to be insisted upon. The 
Senate resolved that the charge was false, and 
that its author should be kept in custody till 
he disclosed at whose suggestion he had come 
forward. Crassus himself believed that the 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY. 



147 



consul had himself contrived the whole busi- 
ness, with the object of making it impossible 
for him to take the part of the accused. "He 
complained to me," says Sallust the historian, 
" of the great insult which had thus been put 
upon him by Cicero." 

Under these circumstances Cicero determin- 
ed to act with vigor. On the fifth of December 
he called a meeting of the Senate, and put it 
to the House what should be done with the 
prisoners in custody. The consul elect gave 
his opinion that they should be put to death. 
Cffisar, when his turn came to speak, rose and 
addressed the Senate. He did not seek to 
defend the accused. They deserved any punish- 
ment. Because that was so, let them be dealt 
with according to law. And the law was that 
no Roman citizen could suffer death except by 
a general decree of the people. If any other 
course should be taken, men would afterwards 
remember not their crimes but the severity 
with which they had been treated. Cato fol- 
lowed, giving his voice for the punishment of 
death ; and Cicero took the same side. The 
Senate, without dividing, voted that the pris- 



148 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



oners were traitors, and must pay the usual 
penalty. 

The consul still feared that a rescue might 
be attempted. He directed the officials to 
make all necessary preparations, and himself 
conducted Lentulus to prison, the other crim- 
inals being put into the charge of the praetors. 
The prison itself was strongly guarded. In 
this building, which was situated under the 
eastern side of the Capitoline Hill, was a pit 
twelve feet deep, said to have been constructed 
by King Tullius. It had stone walls and a 
vaulted stone roof ; it was quite dark, and the 
stench and filth of the place were hideous. 
Lentulus was hurried into this noisome den, 
where the executioners strangled him. His ac« 
complices suffered the same fate. The consul 
was escorted to his house by an enthusiastic 
crowd. When he was asked how it had fared 
with the condemned, he answered with the 
significant words They have lived." 

The chief conspirator died in a less ignoble 
fashion. He had contrived to collect about 
twelve thousand men ; but only a fourth part 
of these were regularly armed ; the rest car- 



A GREAT CONSPIRACY, 



149 



ried hunting spears, pikes, sharpened stakes, 
any weapon that came to hand. At first he 
avoided an engagement, hoping to hear news 
of something accompHshed for his cause by the 
friends whom he had left behind him in Rome. 
When the news of what had happened on the 
fifth of December reached him, he saw that his 
position was desperate. Many who had joined 
the ranks took the first opportunity of de- 
serting ; with those that remained faithful he 
made a hurried march to the north-west, 
hoping to make his way across the Apennines 
into Hither Gaul. But he found a force ready 
to bar his way, while Antonius, with the army 
from Rome, was pressing him from the south. 
Nothing remained for him but to give battle. 
Early in the year 62 b.c. the armies met. The 
rebel leader showed himself that day at his 
best. No soldier could have been braver, no 
general more skillful. But the forces arrayed 
against him were overpowering. When he 
saw that all was lost, he rushed into the 
thickest of the fight, and fell pierced with 
wounds. He was found afterwards far in ad- 
vance of his men, still breathing and with the 



ISO ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 



same haughty expression on his face which had 
distinguished him in Hfe. And such was the 
contagious force of his example that not 3 
single free man of all his followers was taken 
alive either in the battle or in the pursuit that 
followed it. Such was the end of a Great 
Conspiracy. 




Caius Julius C^sar. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



CESAR. 

At eight-and-twenty, C^sar, who not thirty 
years later was to die master of Rome, was 
chiefly known as a fop and a spendthrift. ''In 
all his schemes and all his policy," said Cicero, 
I discern the temper of a tyrant ; but then 
when I see how carefully his hair is arranged, 
how delicately with a single finger he scratches 
his head, I cannot conceive him likely to enter- 
tain so monstrous a design as overthrowing the 
liberties of Rome." As for his debts they were 
enormous. He had contrived to spend his 
own fortune and the fortune of his wife ; and 
he was more than three hundred thousand 
pounds in debt. This was before he had held 
any public office ; and office, when he came to 
hold it, certainly did not improve his position. 



152 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



He was appointed one of the guardians of the 
Appian Way (the great road that led south- 
ward from Rome, and was the route for travel- 
ers to Greece and the East). He spent a 
great sum of money in repairs. His next 
office of aedile was still more expensive. 
Expensive it always was, for the aedile, be- 
sides keeping the temples and other public 
buildings in repair (the special business sig- 
nified by his name), had the management of 
the public games. An allowance was made to 
him for his expenses from the treasury, but 
he was expected, just as the Lord Mayor of 
London is expected, to spend a good deal of 
his own money. Caesar far outdid all his pre- 
decessors. At one of the shows which he 
exhibited, three hundred and twenty pairs of 
gladiators fought in the arena ; and a gladiator, 
with his armor and weapons, and the long 
training which he had to undergo before he 
could fight in public, was a very expensive 
slave. The six hundred and forty would cost, 
first and last, not less than a hundred pounds 
apiece, and many of them, perhaps a third 
of the whole number, would be killed in the 



CjESAR. 



153 



course of the day. Nor was he content with 
the expenses which were more or less neces- 
sary. He exhibited a great show of wild 
beasts in memory of his father, who had died 
nearly twenty years before. The whole furni- 
ture of the theater, down to the very stage, 
was made on this occasion of solid silver. 

For all this seeming folly, there were 
those who discerned thoughts and designs 
of no common kind. Extravagant expendi- 
ture was of course an usual way of winning 
popular favors. A Roman noble bought 
office after office till he reached one that 
entitled him to be sent to govern a province. 
In the plunder of the province he expected 
to find what would repay him all that he had 
spent and leave a handsome sum remaining. 
Casar looked to this end, but he looked also to 
something more. He would be the champion 
of the people, and the people would make him 
the greatest man at Rome. This had been the 
part played by Marius before him; and he 
determined to play it again. The name of 
Marius had been in ill repute since the victory 
of his great rival, Sulla, and Casar determined 



154 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



to restore it to honor. He caused statues of 
this great man to be secretly made, on which 
were inscribed the names of the victories by 
which he had deHvered Rome from the bar- 
barians. On the morning of the show these 
were seen, splendid with gilding, upon the 
height of the Capitol. The first feeling was a 
general astonishment at the young magistrate's 
audacity. Then the populace broke out into 
expressions of enthusiastic delight ; many even 
wept for joy to see again the likeness of their 
old favorite ; all declared that Caesar was his 
worthy successor. The nobles were filled with 
anger and fear. Catulus, who was their leader, 
accused Caesar in the Senate. This man,'' he 
said, is no longer digging mines against his 
country, he is bringing battering-rams against 
it." The Senate, however, was afraid or un- 
willing to act. As for the people, it soon gave 
the young man a remarkable proof of its 
favor. What may be called the High Priest- 
hood became vacant. It was an honor com- 
monly given to some aged man who had won 
victories abroad and borne high honors at 
home. Such competitors there were on this 



CMSAR. »55 



occasion, Catulus being one of them. But 
Casar, though far below the age at which such 
offices were commonly held, determined to 
enter the lists. He refused the heavy bribe 
by which Catulus sought to induce him to 
withdraw from the contest, saying that he 
would raise a greater sum to bring it to a suc- 
cessful end. Indeed, he staked all on the strug- 
gle. When on the day of election he was leav- 
ing his house, his mother followed him to the 
door with tears in her eyes. He turned and 
kissed her, " Mother," he said, " to-day you will 
see your son either High Priest or an exile." 

The fact was that Caesar had always shown 
signs of courage and ambition, and had always 
been confident of his future greatness. Now 
that his position in the country was assured 
men began to remember these stories of his 
youth. In the days when Sulla was master of 
Rome, Cffisar had been one of the very few 
who had ventured to resist the great man's will. 
Marius, the leader of the party, was his uncle, 
and he had himself married the daughter of 
Cunia, another of the popular leaders. This 
wife Sulla ordered him to divorce, but he flatly 



IS6 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



refused. For some time his life was in danger ; 
but Sulla was induced to spare it, remarking, 
however, to friends who interceded for him, on 
the ground that he was still but a boy, ''You 
have not a grain of sense, if you do not see 
that in this boy there is the material for many 
Mariuses." The young Caesar found it safer to 
leave Italy for a time. While traveling in the 
neighborhood of Asia Minor he fell into the 
hands of the pirates, who were at that time the 
terror of all the Eastern Mediterranean. His 
first proceeding was to ask them how much 
they wanted for his ransom. '' Twenty talents," 
(about five thousand pounds) was their answer. 
''What folly ! " he said, " you don't know whom 
you have got hold of. You shall have fifty.'' 
Messengers were sent to fetch the money, and 
Caesar, who was left with a friend and a couple 
of slaves, made the best of the situation. If 
he wanted to go to sleep he would send a 
message commanding his captors to be silent. 
Rejoined their sports,read poems and speeches 
to them, and roundly abused them as ignorant 
barbarians if they failed to applaud. But his 
mosttelling joke was threatening to hang them. 



C^SAR. 



The men laughed at the free-spoken lad, but 
were not long in finding that he was in most 
serious earnest. In about five weeks* time the 
money arrived and Caesar was released. He 
immediately went to Miletus, equipped a 
squadron, and returning to the scene of his 
captivity, found and captured the greater part 
of the band. Leaving his prisoners in safe 
custody at Pergamus, he made his way to the 
governor of the province, who had in his hands 
the power of life and death. But the governor, 
after the manner of his kind, had views of his 
own. The pirates were rich and could afford 
to pay handsomely for their lives. He would 
consider the case, he said. This was not at all 
to Caesar s mind. He hastened back to Per- 
gamus, and, taking the law into his own hands, 
crucified all the prisoners. 

This was the cool and resolute man in whom 
the people saw their best friend and the nobles 
their worst enemy. These last seemed to see 
a chance of ruining him when the conspiracy of 
Catiline was discovered and crushed. He was 
accused, especially by Cato, of having been an 
accomplice ; and when he left the Senate after 



158 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



the debate in which he had argued against put- 
ting the arrested conspirators to death, he was 
mobbed by the gentlemen who formed Cicero's 
body-guard, and was even in danger of his life. 
But the formal charge was never pressed ; in- 
deed it was manifestly false, for Caesar was too 
sure of the favor of the people to have need 
of conspiring to win it. The next year he was 
made praetor, and after his term of office was 
ended, governor of Further Spain. The old 
trouble of debt still pressed upon him, and he 
could not leave Rome till he had satisfied the 
most pressing of his creditors. This he did by 
help of Crassus, the richest man in Rome, who 
stood security for nearly two hundred thous- 
and pounds. To this time belong two anecdotes 
which, whether true or no, are curiously charac- 
teristic of his character. He was passing, on 
the way to his province, a town that had a 
particularly mean and poverty-stricken look. 
One of his companions remarked, I dare say 
. there are struggles for office even here, and 
jealousies and parties.'' ''Yes," said Caesar; 

and indeed, for myself, I would sooner be 
the first man here than the second in Rome/' 



C^SAR. 



159 



Arrived at his journey's end, he took the oppor- 
tunity of a leisure hour to read the life of 
Alexander. He sat awhile lost in thought, then 
burst into tears. His friends inquired the cause. 
"The cause?" he replied. "Is it not cause 
enough that at my age Alexander had con- 
quered half the world, while I have done 
nothing?" Something, however, he contrived 
to do in Spain. He extended the dominion of 
Rome as far as the Atlantic, settled the affairs 
of the provincials to their satisfaction, and con- 
trived at the same time to make money enough 
to pay his debts. Returning to Rome when 
his year of command was ended, he found him- 
self in a difficulty. He wished to have the 
honor of a triumph (a triumph was a proces- 
sion in which a victorious general rode in a 
chariot to the Capitol, preceded and followed 
by the spoils and prisoners taken in his cam- 
paigns), and he also wished to become a candi- 
date for the consulship. But a general who 
desired a triumph had to wait outside the gates 
of the city till it was voted to him, while a can- 
didate for the consulship must lose no time in 
beginning to canvass the people. Casar, 



i6o ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



having to make his choice between the two, 
preferred power to show. He stood for the 
consulship, and was triumphantly elected. 

Once consul he made that famous Coalition 
which is commonly called the First Triumvirate. 
Pompey was the most famous soldier of the 
day, and Crassus, as has been said before, the 
richest man. These two had been enemies, 
and Caesar reconciled them ; and then the three 
together agreed to divide power and the prizes 
of power between them. Caesar would have 
wilHngly made Cicero a fourth, but he refused, 
not, perhaps, without some hesitation. He did 
more ; he ventured to say some things which 
were not more agreeable because they were 
true of the new state of things. This the three 
masters of Rome were not willing to endure, 
and they determined that this troublesome 
orator should be put out of the way. They 
had a ready means of doing it. A certain 
Clodius, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, 
felt a very bitter hatred against Cicero, and by 
way of putting himself in a position to injure 
him, and to attain other objects of his own, 
sought to be made tribune. But there was a 



C^SAR. 



great obstacle in the way. The tribunes were 
tribunes of the plebs, that is, of the commons, 
whose interests they were supposed specially to 
protect ; while Clodius was a noble— indeed, a 
noble of nobles— belonging as he did to that 
great Claudian House which was one of the 
oldest and proudest of Roman families. The 
only thing to be done was to be adopted by 
some plebeian. But here, again, there were 
difficulties. The law provided that an adoption 
should be real, that the adopter should be child- 
less and old enough to be the father of his 
adopted son. The consent of the priests was 
also necessary. This consent was never asked, 
and indeed never could have been given, for 
the father was a married man, had children of 
his own, and was not less than fifteen years 
younger than his new son. Indeed the bill for 
making the adoption legal had been before the 
people for more than a year without making 
any progress. The Three now took it up to 
punish Cicero for his presumption in opposing 
them ; and under its new promoters it was 
passed in a single day, being proposed at noon 
and made law by three o'clock in the afternoon. 



l62 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



What mischief Clodius was thus enabled to 
work against Cicero we shall hear in the next 
chapter but one. 

His consulship ended, Csesar received a 
substantial prize for his services, the govern- 
ment of the province of Gaul for five years. 
Before he left Italy to take up his command, 
he had the satisfaction of seeing Cicero driven 
into banishment. That done, he crossed the 
Alps. The next nine years (for his government 
was prolonged for another period when the first 
came to an end) he was engaged in almost 
incessant war, though still finding time to 
manage the politics of Rome. The campaigns 
which ended in making Gaul from the Alps to 
the British Channel, and from the Atlantic to 
the Rhine, a Roman possession, it is not within 
my purpose to describe. Nevertheless, it may 
be interesting to say a few words about his 
dealings with our own island. In his first ex- 
pedition, in the summer of 55 b.c, he did little 
more than effect a landing on the coast, and 
this not without considerable loss. In the next, 
made early in the following year, he employed 
a force of more than forty thousand men, con- 




A British Chieftain. 



i 




C^SAR. 



veyed in a flotilla of eight hundred ships. This 
time the Britons did not venture to oppose 
his landing ; and when they met him in the 
field, as he marched inward, they were invariably 
defeated. They then changed their tactics and 
retired before him, laying waste the country as 
they went. H e crossed the Thames some little 
way to the westward of where London now 
stands, received the submission of one native 
tribe, and finally concluded a peace with the 
native leader Cassivelaunus, who gave hostages 
and promised tribute. The general result of ten 
years' fighting was to add a great province to 
the empire at the cost of a horrible amount of 
bloodshed, of the lives, as some say, of two mil- 
lions of men, women, and children (for Caesar, 
though not positively cruel, was absolutely care- 
less of suffering), and to leave the conqueror 
master of the Roman world. The coalition in- 
deed was broken up, for Crassus had perished in 
the East, carrying on a foolish and unprovoked 
war with the Parthians, and Pompey had come 
to fear and hate his remaining rival. But Cssar 
was now strong enough to do without friends, 
and to crush enemies. The Senate vainly 



i64 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

commanded him to disperse his army by a 
certain day, on pain of being considered an 
enemy of the country. He continued to ad- 
vance till he came to the boundaries of Italy, 
a little river, whose name, the Rubicon, was 
then made famous forever, which separated 
Cisalpine Gaul from Umbria. To cross this 
was practically to declare war, and even the 
resolute Caesar hesitated awhile. He thought 
his course over by himself ; he even consulted 
his friends. He professed himself pained at 
the thought of the war of which his act would 
be the beginning, and of how posterity would 
judge his conduct. Then with the famous 
words, ''The die is cast,'' he plunged into the 
stream. Pompey fled from Rome and from 
Italy. Caesar did not waste an hour in pur- 
suing his success. First making Italy wholly 
his own, he marched into Spain, which was 
Pompey s stronghold, and secured it. Thence 
he returned to Rome, and from Rome again 
made his way into Macedonia, where Pompey 
had collected his forces. The decisive battle 
was fought at Pharsalia in Thessaly ; for though 
the remnants of Pompey's party held out, the 



C^SAR. 



issue of the war was never doubtful after that 
day. 

Returning to Rome (for of his proceedings 
in Egypt and elsewhere there is no need to 
speak), he used his victory with as much mercy 
as he had shown energy in winning it. To 
Cicero he showed not only nothing of malice, 
but the greatest courtesy and kindness. He 
had written to him from Egypt, telling him 
that he was to keep all his dignities and 
honors ; and he had gone out of his way to 
arrange an interview with him, and he even 
condescended to enter into a friendly con- 
troversy. Cicero had written a little treatise 
about his friend Cato ; and as Cato had been 
the consistent adversary of C^sar, and had 
killed himself rather than fall into the hands of 
the master of Rome, it required no little good 
nature in Caesar to take it in good part. He con- 
tented himself with writing an answer, to which 
he o-ave the title of Antz-Cato, and in which, 

o 

while he showed how useless and unpractical 
the policy of Cato had been, he paid the highest 
compliments to the genius and integrity of the 
man. He even conferred upon Cicero the dis- 



1 66 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



tinguished honor of a visit ; which the host 
thus describes in a letter to Atticus. What a 
formidable guest I have had ! Still, I am not 
sorry ; for all went off very well. On Decem- 
ber 8th he came to Philippus' house in the even- 
ing. (Philippus was his brother-in-law.) The 
villa was so crammed with troops that there 
was scarcely a chamber where the great man 
himself could dine. I suppose there were two 
thousand men. I was really anxious what might 
happen next day. But Barba Cassius came to 
my help, and gave me a guard. The camp was 
pitched in the park; the house was strictly 
guarded. On the 19th he was closeted with 
Philippus till one o'clock in the afternoon. 
No one was admitted. He was going over 
accounts with Balbus, I fancy. After this he 
took a stroll on the shore. Then came the 
bath. He heard the epigram to Mamurra, 
(a most scurrilous epigram by Catullus), and 
betrayed no annoyance. He dressed for dinner 
and sat down. As he was under a course of 
medicine, he ate and drank without appre- 
hension and in the pleasantest humor. The 
entertainment was sumptuous and elaborate ; 



C^SAR, 



167 



and not only this, but well cooked and seasoned 
with good talk. The great man's attendants 
also were most abundantly entertained in three 
other rooms. The inferior freedmen and the 
slaves had nothing to complain of ; the su- 
perior kind had an even elegant reception. 
Not to say more, I showed myself a genial 
host. Still he was not the kind of guest to 
whom we would say, ' My very dear sir, you 
will come again, I hope, when you are this 
way next time.' There was nothing of im- 
portance in our conversation, but much literary 
talk. What do you want to know? He was 
gratified and seemed pleased to be with me. 
He told me that he should be one day at Baiae, 
and another at Puteoli." 

Within three months this remarkable career 
came to a sudden and violent end. There 
were some enemies whom all Caesar's clem- 
ency and kindness had not conciliated. Some 
hated him for private reasons of their own, 
some had a genuine belief that if he could 
be put out of the way, Rome might yet 
again be a free country. The people too, 
who had been perfectly ready to submit to 



1 68 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



the reality of power, grew suspicious of some 
of its outward signs. The name of King had 
been hateful at Rome since the last bearer 
of it, Tarquin the Proud, had been driven 
out nearly seven centuries before. There 
were now injudicious friends, or, it may be, ju- 
dicious enemies, who were anxious that Caesar 
should assume it. The prophecy was quoted 
from the books of the Sibyl, that Rome might 
conquer the Parthians if she put herself under 
the command of a king ; otherwise she must 
fail. On the strength of this Caesar was saluted 
by the title of King as he was returning one 
day from Alba to the Capitol. The populace 
made their indignation manifest, and he replied, 
" I am no king, only C^sar;" but it was ob- 
served that he passed on with a gloomy 
air. He bore himself haughtily in the 
Senate, not rising to acknowledge the com- 
pliments paid to him. At the festival of 
the Lupercalia, as he sat looking on at the 
sports in a gilded chair and clad in a triumphal 
robe, Antony offered him a crown wreathed with 
bay leaves. Some applause followed ; it was 
not general, however, but manifestly got up for 



CJESAR. 



169 



the occasion. Caesar put the crown away, and 
the shout that followed could not be misunder- 
stood. It was offered again, and a few ap- 
plauded as before, while a second rejection 
drew forth the same hearty approval His 
statues were found with crowns upon them. 
These two tribunes removed, and at the 
same time ordered the imprisonment of the 
men who had just saluted him as king. The 
people were delighted, but Caesar had them 
degraded from their office. The general dis- 
satisfaction thus caused induced the conspira- 
tors to proceed. Warnings, some of which we 
may suppose to have come from those who 
were in the secret, were not wanting. By 
these he was wrought upon so much that he 
had resolved not to stir from his house on the 
day which he understood was to be fatal to 
him ; but Decimus Brutus, who was in the 
plot, dissuaded him from his purpose. The 
scene that followed may be told once again in 
the words in which Plutarch describes it : Arte- 
midoros, of Cnidus, a teacher of Greek, who 
had thus come to be intimate with some of the 
associates of Brutus, had become acquainted to 



lyo ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



a great extent with what was in progress, and 
had drawn up a statement of the information 
which he had to give. Seeing that Caesar gave 
the papers presented to him to the slaves with 
him, he came up cldfse and said, ' Caesar, read 
this alone and that quickly : it contains matters 
that nearly concern yourself/ C^sar took it, 
and would have read it, but was hindered by 
the crowd of persons that thronged to salute 
him. Keeping it in his hand, he passed into 
the House. In the place to which the Senate 
had been summoned stood a statue of Pompey. 
Cassius is said to have looked at it and silently 
invoked the dead man s help, and this though 
he was inclined to the skeptical tenets of Epi- 
curus. Meanwhile Antony, who was firmly 
attached to Caesar and a man of great strength, 
was purposely kept in conversation outside the 
senate-house by Decimus Brutus. As Caesar 
entered, the Senate rose to greet him. Some 
of the associates of Brutus stood behind his 
chair; others approached him in front, seemingly 
joining their entreaties to those which Cimber 
Tullius was addressing to him on behalf of his 
brother. He sat down, and rejected the petition 



C^SAR. 



171 



with a gesture of disapproval at their urgency. 
TulHus then seized his toga with both hands 
and dragged it from his neck. This was the 
signal for attack. Casca struck him first on 
the neck. The wound was not fatal, nor even 
serious, so agitated was the striker at dealing 
the first blow in so terrible a deed. Caesar 
turned upon him, seized the dagger, and held 
it fast, crying at the same time in Latin, * Casca, 
thou villain, what art thou about ? ' while Casca 
cried in Greek to his brother, ' Brother, help ! ' 
Those senators who were not privy to the plot 
were overcome with horror. They could neither 
cry nor help : they dared not even speak. The 
conspirators were standing round Caesar each 
with a drawn sword in his hand ; whithersoever 
he turned his eyes he saw a weapon ready to 
strike, and he struggled like a wild beast among 
the hunters. They had agreed that every one 
should take a part in the murder, and Brutus^ 
friend as he was, could not hold back. The rest, 
some say, he struggled with, throwing himself 
hither and thither, and crying aloud ; but as soon 
as he saw Brutus with a drawn sword in his 
hand,he wrapped his head in his toga and ceased 



JT2 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



to resist, falling, whether by chance or by com« 
pulsion from the assassins, at the pedestal of 
Pompey's statue. He is said to have received 
three-and-twenty wounds. Many of his assail- 
ants struck each other as they aimed repeated 
blows at his body." His funeral was a remark- 
able proof of his popularity. The pit in which 
the body was to be burned was erected in the 
Field of Mars. In the Forum was erected a 
gilded model of the temple of Mother Venus. 
(Caesar claimed descent through ^neas from 
this goddess.) Within this shrine was a couch 
of ivory, with coverlets of gold and purple, and 
at its head atrophy with the robe which he had 
worn when he was assassinated. High officers 
of state, past and present, carried the couch into 
the Forum. Some had the idea of burning it 
in the chapel of Jupiter in the Capitol, some in 
Pompey s Hall (where he was killed). Of a 
sudden two men, wearing swords at their side, 
and each carrying two javelins, came forward 
and set light to it with waxen torches which 
they held in their hands. The crowd of by- 
standers hastily piled up a heap of dry brush- 
wood, throwing on it the hustings, the benches, 



C^SAR. 



173 



and any thing that had been brought as a 
present. The flute players and actors threw 
off the triumphal robes in which they were clad, 
rent them, and threw them upon the flames, and 
the veterans added the decorations with which 
they had come to attend the funeral,while moth- 
ers threw in the ornaments of their children. 

The doors of the building in which the murder 
was perpetrated were blocked up so that it never 
could be entered again. The day (the 1 5th of 
March) was declared to be accursed. No public 
business was ever to be done upon it. 

These proceedings probably represented the 
popular feeling about the deed, for Csesar, in 
addition to the genius which every one must 
have recognized, had just the qualities which 
make men popular. He had no scruples, but 
then he had no meannesses. He incurred 
enormous debts with but a faint chance of 
paying them — no chance, we may say, except by 
the robbery of others. He laid his hands upon 
what he wanted, taking for instance three thou- 
sand pounds weight of gold from the treasury of 
the Capitol and leaving gilded brass in its stead ; 
and he plundered the unhappy Gauls without 



174 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



remorse. But then he was as free in giving as 
he was unscrupulous in taking. He had the 
personal courage, too, which is one of the most 
attractive of all qualities. Again and again in 
battle he turned defeat into victory. He would 
lay hold of the fugitives as they ran, seize them 
by the throat, and get them by main force face 
to face with the foe. Crossing the Hellespont 
after the battle of Pharsalia in a small boat, he 
met two of the enemy s ships. Without hesita- 
tion he discovered himself, called upon them to 
surrender, and was obeyed. At Alexandria he 
was surprised by a sudden sally of the besieg- 
ed, and had to leap into the harbor. He swam 
two hundred paces to the nearest ship, lifting a 
manuscript in his left hand to keep it out of the 
water, and holding his military cloak in his 
teeth, for he would not have the enemy boast 
of securing any spoil from his person. 

He allowed nothing to stand in his way. If 
it suited his policy to massacre a whole tribe, 
men, women, and children, he gave the order 
without hesitation, just as he recorded it after- 
wards in his history without a trace of remorse 
or regret. If a rival stood in his way he had 



CjESAR. 



175 



him removed, and was quite indifferent as to 
how the removal was effected. But his object 
gained, or wherever there was no object in ques- 
tion, he could be the kindest and gentlest of 
men. A friend with whom he was traveling 
was seized with sudden illness. Caesar gave 
up at once to him the only chamber in the little 
inn, and himself spent the night in the open 
air. His enemies he pardoned with singular 
facility, and would even make the first advances. 
Political rivals, once rendered harmless, were 
admitted to his friendship, and even promoted 
to honor ; writers who had assailed him with 
the coarsest abuse he invited to his table. 

Of the outward man this picture has reached 
us. He is said to have been remarkably tall> 
with a light complexion and well-shaped limbs. 
His face was a little too full ; his eyes black and 
brilliant. His health was excellent, but towards 
the latter end of his life he was subject to faint- 
ing fits and to frightful dreams at night. On 
two occasions also, when some public business 
was being transacted, he had epileptic fits. He 
was very careful of his personal appearance, had 
his hair and beard scrupulously cut and shaven. 



176 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



He was excessively annoyed at the disfigure- 
ment of baldness, which he found was made 
the subject of many lampoons. It had become 
ihis habit, therefore, to bring up his scanty locks 
over his head ; and of all the honors decreed 
to him by the Senate and people, none was 
more welcome to him than that which gave him 
the right of continually wearing a garland of 
bay/^ 

He was wonderfully skillful in the use of 
arms, an excellent swimmer, and extraordin- 
arily hardy. On the march he would some- 
times ride, but more commonly walk, keeping 
his head uncovered both in rain and sunshine. 
He traveled with marvelous expedition, trav- 
ersing a hundred miles in a day for several 
days together ; if he came to a river he would 
swim it, or sometimes cross it on bladders. 
Thus he would often anticipate his own mes- 
sengers. For all this he had a keen apprecia- 
tion of pleasure, and was costly and even luxuri- 
ous in his personal habits. He is said, for in- 
stance, to have carried with him a tesselated 
pavement to be laid down in his tent through- 
out his campaign in Gaul. 



Cn^us Pompeius Magnus. 



CHAPTER IX, 



POMPEY. 



At an age when Caesar was still idling away 
his. time, Pompey had achieved honors such 
as the veteran generals of Rome were accus- 
tomed to regard as the highest to which they 
could aspire. He had only just left, if indeed 
he had left, school, when his father took him 
to serve under him in the war against the 
Italian allies of Rome. He was not more than 
nineteen when he distinguished himself by 
behaving in circumstances of great difficulty 
and danger with extraordinary prudence and 
courage. The elder Pompey, Strabo "the 
squint-eyed," as his contemporaries called him, 
after their strange fashion of giving nicknames 
from personal defects, and as he was content 
to call himself, was an able general, but hated 



178 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DAYS OF CICERO. 



for his cruelty and avarice. The leaders of the 
opposite faction saw an opportunity of getting 
rid of a dangerous enemy and of bringing over 
to their own side the forces which he com- 
manded. Their plan was to assassinate the 
son as he slept, to burn the father in his tent, 
and at the same time to stir up a mutiny among 
the troops. The secret, however, was not kept. 
A letter describing the plot was brought to the 
young Pompey as he sat at dinner with the 
ringleader. The lad showed no sign of disturb- 
ance, but drank more freely than usual, and 
pledged his false friend with especial heartiness. 
He then rose, and after putting an extra guard 
on his father's tent, composed himself to sleep, 
but not in his bed. The assassins stabbed 
the coverlet with repeated blows, and then ran 
to rouse the soldiers to revolt. The camp 
was immediately in an uproar, and the elder 
Pompey, though he had been preserved by 
his son's precautions, dared not attempt to 
quell it. The younger man was equal to the 
occasion. Throwing himself on his face in 
front of the gate of the camp, he declared that 
if his comrades were determined to desert to 



POMPEY. 



179 



the enemy, they must pass over his dead body. 
His entreaties prevailed, and a reconciliation 
was effected between the general and his troops. 

Not many weeks after this incident the 
father died, struck, it was said, by lightning, 
and Pompey became his own master. It was 
not long before he found an opportunity of 
gaining still higher distinction. The civil war 
still continued to rage, and few did better 
service to the party of the aristocrats than 
Pompey. Others were content to seek their 
personal safety in Sulla's camp ; Pompey was 
resolved himself to do something for the cause. 
He made his way to Picenum, where his family 
estates we e situated and where his own influ- 
ence was great, and raised three legions (nearly 
twenty thousand men), with all their commis- 
sariat and transport complete, and hurried to 
the assistance of Sulla. Three of the hostile 
generals sought to intercept him. He fell with 
his whole force on one of them, and crushed 
him, carrying off, besides his victory, the per- 
sonal distinction of having slain in single 
combat the champion of the opposing force. 
The towns by which he passed eagerly hailed 



i8o ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



him as their deliverer. A second commander 
who ventured to encounter him found himself 
deserted by his army and was barely able to 
escape ; a third was totally routed. Sulla re- 
ceived his young partisan, who was not more 
than twenty-three years of age, with distin- 
guished honors, even rising from his seat and 
uncovering at his approach. 

During the next two years his reputation 
continued to increase. He won victories in 
Gaul, in Sicily, and in Africa. As he was 
returning to Rome after the last of these 
campaigns, the great Dictator himself headed 
the crowd that went forth to meet him, and 
saluted him as Pompey the Great, a title which 
he continued to use as his family name.^ But 
there was a further honor which the young 
general was anxious to obtain, but Sulla was 
unwilling to grant, the supreme glory of a 
triumph. " No one,'' he said, who was not 
or had not been consul, or at least praetor, 
could triumph. The first of the Scipios, who 

* Pompeius was the name of his house (gens), Straho 
had been the name of his family( /<3:m7/^). This he seems 
to have disused, assuming Magnus in its stead. 



POMPEY. 



had won Spain from the Carthaginians, had not 
asked for this honor because he wanted this 
quahfication. Was it to be given to a beardless 
youth, too young even to sit in the Senate?'' 
But the beardless youth insisted. He even had 
the audacity to hint that the future belonged 
not to Sulla but to himself. More men," he 
said, worship the rising than the setting sun." 
Sulla did not happen to catch the words, but he 
saw the emotion they aroused in the assembly, 
and asked that they should be repeated to 
him. His astonishment permitted him to say 
nothing more than Let him triumph ! Let 
him triumph." And triumph he did, to the 
disgust of his older rivals, whom he intended, 
but that the streets were not broad enough to 
allow of th^ display, still further to affront by 
harnessing elephants instead of horses to his 
chariot. 

Two years afterwards he met an antagonist 
more formidable than any he had yet encoun- 
tered. Sertorius, the champion at once of 
the party of the people and of the native 
tribes of Spain, was holding out against the 
government of Rome. The veteran leader 



1 82 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DAYS OF CICERO. 



professed a great contempt for his young 
adversary, I should whip the boy," he said, 
if I were not afraid of the old woman" (mean- 
ing Pompey's colleague). But he took good 
care not to underrate him in practice, and put 
forth all his skill in dealing with him. Pom- 
pey's first campaign against him was disastrous ; 
the successes of the second were checkered by 
some serious defeats. For five years the 
struggle continued, and seemed little likely to 
come to an end, when Sertorius was assassin- 
ated by his second in command, Perpenna. 
Perpenna was unable to wield the power which 
he had thus acquired, and was defeated and 
taken prisoner by Pompey. He endeavored 
to save his life by producing the correspond- 
ence of Sertorius. This implicated some of 
the most distinguished men in Rome, who had 
held secret communications with the rebel leader 
and had even invited him over into Italy. With 
admirable wisdom Pompey, while he ordered 
the instant execution of the traitor, burned the 
letters unread. 

Returning to Italy he was followed by his 
usual good fortune. That country had been 



POMPEY. 



183 



suffering cruelly from a revolt of the slaves, 
which the Roman generals had been strangely 
slow in suppressing. Roused to activity by 
the tidings of Pompey's approach, Crassus, who 
was in supreme command, attacked and de- 
feated the insurgent army. A considerable 
body, however, contrived to escape, and it was 
this with which Pompey happened to fall in, 
and which he completely destroyed. Crassus 
defeated the enemy," he was thus enabled to 
boast, but I pulled up the war by the roots.'* 
No honors were too great for a man at once 
so skillful and so fortunate (for the Romans had 
always a great belief in a general's good for- 
tune). On the 31st of December, b. c. 71, being 
still a simple gentleman— that is, having held 
no civil office in the State — he triumphed for 
the second time, and on the following day, 
being then some years below the legal age, and 
having held none of the offices by which it was 
usual to mount to the highest dignity in the 
commonwealth, he entered on his first consul- 
ship, Crassus being his colleague. 

Still he had not yet reached the height of his 
glory. During the years that followed his con- 



1 84 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



sulship, the pirates who infested the Mediter- 
ranean had become intolerable. Issuing, not 
as was the case in after times, from the harbors 
of Northern Africa, but from fastnesses in the 
southern coast of Asia Minor, they plundered 
the more civilized regions of the West, and 
made it highly dangerous to traverse the seas 
either for pleasure or for gain. It was impos- 
sible to transport the armies of Rome to the 
provinces except in the winter, when the pirates 
had retired to their strongholds. Even Italy 
itself was not safe. The harbor of Caieta 
with its shipping, was burned under the very 
eye of the praetor. From Misenum the pirates 
carried off the children of the admiral who had 
^,he year before led an expedition against them. 
They even ventured not only to blockade Ostia, 
the harbor of Rome, and almost within sight 
of the city, but to capture the fleet that was 
stationed there. They were especially insult- 
ing to Roman citizens. If a prisoner claimed to 
be such — and the claim generally insured pro- 
tection — they would pretend the greatest peni- 
tence and alarm, falling on their knees before 
him, and entreating his pardon. Then they 



POMPEY. 



would put shoes on his feet, and robe him in a 
citizen's garb. Such a mistake, they would 
say, must not happen again. The end of their 
jest was to make him " walk the plank," and 
with the sarcastic permission to depart un- 
harmed, they let down a ladder into the sea, and 
compelled him to descend, under penalty of 
being still more summarily thrown overboard. 
Men's eyes began to be turned on Pompey, as 
the leader who had been prosperous in all his 
undertakings. In 67 b. c. a law was proposed 
appointing a commander (who, however, was 
not named),who should have absolute power for 
three years over the sea as far as the Pillars of 
Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar), and the 
coast for fifty miles inland, and who should be 
furnished with two hundred ships, as many sol- 
diers and sailors as he wanted, and more than 
a million pounds in money. The nobles were 
furious in their opposition, and prepared to 
prevent by force the passing of this law. The 
proposer narrowly escaped with his life, and 
Pompey himself was threatened. " If you will 
be another Romulus, like Romulus you shall 
die" (one form of the legend of Rome's first 



1 86 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



king represented him as having been torn to 
pieces by the senators.) But all resistance was 
unavailing. The new command was created, 
and of course bestowed upon Pompey. The 
price of corn, which had risen to a famine 
height in Rome, fell immediately the appoint- 
ment was made. The result, indeed, amply 
justified the choice. The new general made 
short work of the task that had been set him. 
Not satisfied with the force put under his com- 
mand, he collected five hundred ships and one 
hundred and twenty thousand men. With 
these he swept the pirates from the seas and 
stormed their strongholds, and all in less than 
three months. Twenty thousand prisoners fel' 
into his hands. With unusual humanity he 
spared their lives, and thinking that man vv^as 
the creature of circumstances, determined to 
change their manner of life. They were to be 
removed from the sea, should cease to be 
sailors, and become farmers. It is possible that 
the old man of Corycus, whose skill in garden- 
ing Virgil celebrates in one of his Georgics, 
was one of the pirates whom the judicious 
mercy of Pompey changed into a useful citizen. 



POMPEY. 



187 



A still greater success remained to be won. 
For more than twenty years war, occasionally 
intercepted by periods of doubtful peace, had 
been carried on between Rome and Mithridates, 
king of Pontus. This prince, though reduced 
more than once to the greatest extremities, had 
contrived with extraordinary skill and courage 
to retrieve his fortunes, and now in 67 B.C. was 
in possession of the greater part of his original 
dominion. Lucullus, a general of the greatest 
ability, was in command of the forces of Rome, 
but he had lost the confidence of his troops, 
and affairs were at a standstill. Pompey's 
friends proposed that the supreme command 
should be transferred to him, and the law, which 
Cicero supported in what is perhaps the most 
perfect of his political speeches,^ was passed. 
Pompey at once proceeded to the East. For 
four years Mithridates held out, but with little 
hope of ultimate success or even of escape. 
In 64, after vainly attempting to poison him- 
self, such was the power of the antidotes by 
which he had fortified himself against domestic 

' The Pro Lege Manilla. The law was proposed by one 
Manilius, a tribune of the people. 



1 88 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 



treachery (for so the story runs), he perished by 
the sword of one of his mercenaries. For two 
years more Pompey was busied in settHng the 
affairs of the East. At last, in 6i, he returned 
to Rome to enjoy a third triumph, and that the 
most splendid which the city had ever witnessed. 
It lasted for two days, but still the time was too 
short for the display of the spoils of victory. 
The names of no less than fifteen conquered 
nations were carried in procession. A thousand 
forts, nine hundred cities, had been taken, and 
the chief of them were presented by means of 
pictures to the eyes of the people. The revenue 
of the State had been almost doubled by these 
conquests. Ninety thousand talents in gold 
and silver coin were paid into the treasury, nor 
was this at the expense of the soldiers, whose 
prize money was so large that the smallest 
share amounted to fifty pounds. Never before 
was such a sight seen in the world, and if 
Pompey had died when it was finished, he 
would have been proclaimed the most fortunate 
of mankind. 

Certainly he was never so great again as he 
was that day. When with Caesar and Crassus 



POMPEY. 



he divided all the power of the State, he was 
only the second, and by far the second, of the 
three. His influence, his prestige, his popu- 
larity declined year by year. The good fortune 
which had followed him without ceasing from 
his earliest years now seemed to desert him. 
Even the shows, the most magnificent ever 
seen in the city, with which he entertained the 
people at the dedication of his theater (built at 
his own expense for the public benefit) were 
not wholly a success. Here is a letter of 
Cicero about them to his friend Marius ; 
interesting as giving both a description of the 
scene and as an account of the writer's own 
feelings about it. " If it was some bodily pain 
or weakness of health that kept you from 
coming to the games, I must attribute your 
absence to fortune rather than to a judicious 
choice. But if you thought the things which 
most men admire contemptible, and so, though 
health permitted, would not come, then I am 
doubly glad ; glad both that you were free from 
illness and that you were so vigorous in mind 
as to despise the sights which others so unrea- 
sonably admire. . . . Generally the shows were 



I90 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

most Splendid, but not to your taste, if I may 
judge of yours by my own. First, the veteran 
actors who for their own honor had retired 
from the stage, returned to it to do honor to 
Pompey. Your favorite, my dear friend 
^sopus, acquitted himself so poorly as to 
make us all feel that he had best retire. When 
he came to the oath— 

* And if of purpose set I break my faith/ 

his voice failed him. What need to tell you 
more ? You know all about the other shows ; 
they had not even the charm which moderate 
shows commonly have. The ostentation with 
which they were furnished forth took away all 
their gayety. What charm is there in having 
six hundred mules in the Cly temnestr a or \}^\x^^ 
thousand supernumeraries in the Trojan Horsey 
or cavalry and infantry in foreign equipment in 
some battle-piece. The populace admired all 
this ; but it would have given you no kind of 
pleasure. After this came a sort of wild- 
beast fights, lasting for five days. They were 
splendid : no man denies it. But what man of 
culture can feel any pleasure when some poor 



POMPEY. 



fellow is torn in pieces by some powerful animal, 
or when some noble animal is run through with 
a hunting spear. If these things are worth 
seeing, you have seen them before. And I, 
who was actually present, saw nothing new. 
The last day was given up to the elephants. 
Great was the astonishment of the crowd at the 
sight ; but of pleasure there was nothing. Nay, 
there was some feeling of compassion, some 
sense that this animal has a certain kinship with 
man." The elder Pliny tells us that two 
hundred lions were killed on this occasion, 
and that the pity felt for the elephants rose to 
the height of absolute rage. So lamentable 
was the spectacle of their despair, so pitifully 
did they implore the mercy of the audience, 
that the whole multitude rose in tears and 
called down upon Pompey the curses which 
soon descended on him." 

And then Pompey's young wife, Julia, Caesar s 
daughter, died. She had been a bond of union 
between the two men, and the hope of peace 
was sensibly lessened by her loss. Perhaps the 
first rupture would have come any how ; when 
it did come it found Pompey quite unprepared 



192 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



for the conflict. He seemed indeed to be a 
match for his rival, but his strength collapsed 
almost at a touch. I have but to stamp 
with my foot/' he said on one occasion, and 
soldiers will spring up ; " yet when Caesar 
declared war by crossing the Rubicon, he fled 
without a struggle. In little more than a year 
and a half all was over. The battle of Phar- 
salia was fought on the 9th of August, and on 
September the 29th the man who had triumphed 
over three continents lay a naked, headless 
corpse on the shore of Egypt. 



CHAPTER X. 



EXILE. 

The suppression of the " Great Conspiracy " 
was certainly the most glorious achievement ol 
Cicero's life. Honors such as had never be- 
fore been bestowed on a citizen of Rome were 
heaped upon him. Men of the highest rank 
spoke of him both in the Senate and before 
the people as the " Father of his fatherland." 
A public thanksgiving, such as was ordered 
when great victories had been won, was offered 
in his name. Italy was even more enthu- 
siastic than the capital. The chief towns voted 
him such honors as they could bestow ; Capua 
in particular erected to him a gilded statue, 
and gave him the title of Patron of the city. 

Still there were signs of trouble in the future. 
It was the duty of the consul on quitting office 
to swear that he had discharged his duty with 



194 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CIGERO. 



fidelity, and it was usual for him at the same 
time to make a speech in which he narrated the 
events of his consulship. Cicero was preparing 
to speak when one of the new tribunes inter- 
vened. '^A man," he cried, '^who has put 
citizens to death without hearing them in their 
defense is not worthy to speak. He must do 
nothing more than take the oath." Cicero was 
ready with his answer. Raising his voice he 
said, I swear that I, and I alone, have saved 
this commonwealth and this city." The as- 
sembly shouted their approval ; and when the 
ceremony was concluded the whole multitude 
escorted the ex-consul to his house. The time 
was not come for his enemies to attack him ; 
but that he had enemies was manifest. 

With one dangerous man he had the misfor- 
tune to come into collision in the year that 
followed his consulship. This was the Clodius 
of whom we have heard something in the 
preceding chapter. The two men had hitherto 
been on fairly good terms. Clodius, as we 
have seen, belonged to one of the noblest 
families in Rome, was a man of some ability 
and wit, and could make himself agreeable 



EXILE. 



195 



when he was pleased to do so. But events for 
which Cicero was not in the least to blame 
brought about a life-long enmity between them 
Toward the close of the year Clodius had been 
guilty of an act of scandalous impiety, intruding 
himself, disguised as a woman, into some pecu- 
liarly sacred rites which the matrons of Rome 
were accustomed to perform in honor of the 
" Good Goddess." He had powerful friends, 
and an attempt was made to screen him, which 
Cicero, who was genuinely indignant at the 
fellow's wickedness, seems to have resisted. 
In the end he was put upon his trial, though 
it was before a jury which had been specially 
packed for the occasion. His defense was an 
alibi, an attempt, that is, to prove that he was 
elsewhere on the night when he was alleged to 
have misconducted himself at Rome. He 
brought forward witnesses who swore that they 
had seen him at the very time at Interamna, a 
town in Umbria, and a place which was distant 
at least two days' journey from Rome. To 
rebut this evidence Cicero was brought forward 
by the prosecution. As he stepped forward 
the partisans of the accused set up a howl of 



196 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



disapproval. But the jury paid him the high 
compHment of rising from their seats, and the 
uproar ceased. He deposed that Clodius had 
been at his house on the morning of the day 
in question. 

Clodius was acquitted. If evidence had 
any thing to do with the result, it was the con- 
duct of Caesar that saved him. It was in his 
house that the alleged intrusion had taken 
place, and he had satisfied himself by a private 
examination of its inmates that the charge was 
true. But now he professed to know nothing 
at all about the matter. Probably the really 
potent influence in the case was the money 
which Crassus liberally distributed among the 
jurors. The fact of the money was indeed 
notorious. Some of the jury had pretended 
that they were in fear of their lives, and had 
asked for a guard. A guard ! " said Catulus, 
to one of them, ''what did you want a guard 
for ? that the money should not be taken from 
you ? " 

But Clodius, though he had escaped, never 
forgave the man whose evidence had been 
given against him. Cicero too felt that there 



EXILE. 



197 



was war to the knife betv/een them. On the 
first meeting of the Senate after the conclusion 
of the trial he made a pointed attack upon his 
old acquaintance. Lentulus/' he said, was 
twice acquitted, and Catiline twice, and now 
this third malefactor has been let loose on the 
commonwealthby his judges. But, Clodius, do 
not misunderstand what has happened. It is 
for the prison, not for the city, that your judges 
have kept you ; not to keep you in the country, 
but to deprive you of the privilege of exile was 
what they intended. Be of good cheer, then. 
Fathers. No new evil has come upon us, but we 
have found out the evil that exists. One villain 
has been put upon his trial, and the result has 
taught us that there are more villains than one. " 

Clodius attempted to banter his antagonist. 
''You are a fine gentleman," he said ; *'you 
have been at Bai^ (Bai^ was a fashionable 
watering-place on the Campanian coast). 
''Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to 
have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And 
the attack and repartee went on. " You have 
bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a large 
sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and 



198 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



was known to have somewhat crippled his 
means by doing so.) With you the buying 
has been of jurymen." They gave you no 
credit though you spoke on oath.'' ''Yes ; five- 
and-twenty gave me credit'' (five-and-twenty 
of the jury had voted for a verdict of guilty ; 
two-and thirty for acquittal), ''but your thirty- 
two gave you none, for they would have their 
money down." The Senate shouted applause, 
and Clodius sat down silent and confounded. 

How Clodius contrived to secure for himself 
the office of tribune, the vantage ground from 
which he hoped to work his revenge, has been 
already told in the sketch of Caesar. Caesar 
indeed was really responsible for all that was 
done. It was he who made it possible for 
Clodius to act ; and he allowed him to act 
when he could have stopped him by the lifting 
of his finger. He was determined to prove to 
Cicero that he was master. But he never 
showed himself after the first interference in the 
matter of the adoption. He simply allowed 
Clodius to work his will without hindrance. 

Clodius proceeded with considerable skill. 
He proposed various laws,which were so popular 



EXILE. 



199 



that Cicero, though knowing that they would 
be turned against himself, did not venture to 
oppose them. Then came a proposal directly 
leveled at him. Any man who shall have 
put to death a Roman citizen uncondemned 
and without a trial is forbidden fire and water." 
(This was the form of a sentence of exile. No 
one was allowed under penalty of death to 
furnish the condemned with fire and water 
within a certain distance of Rome.) Cicero at 
once assumed the squalid dress with which 
it was the custom for accused persons to 
endeavor to arouse the compassion of their 
fellow-citizens. Twenty thousand of the upper 
classes supported him by their presence. The 
Senate itself, on the motion of one of the 
tribunes, went into this strange kind of mourn- 
ing on his account. 

The consuls of the year were Gabinus and 
Piso. The first was notoriously hostile, of the 
second Cicero hoped to make a friend, the more 
so as he was a kinsman of his daughter s hus- 
band. He gives a lively picture of an interview 
with him. It was nearly eleven o'clock in the 
morning when we went to him. He came out 



200 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



of a dirty hovel to meet us, with his sHppers 
on, and his head muffled up. His breath 
smelt most odiously of wine ; but he excused 
himself on the score of his health, which com- 
pelled him, he said, to use medicines in which 
wine was employed." His answer to the 
petition of his visitors (for Cicero was accom- 
panied by his son-in-law) was at least commend- 
ably frank. "My colleague Gabinius is in 
absolute poverty, and does not know where to 
turn. Without a province he must be ruined. 
A province he hopes to get by the help of 
Clodius, but it must be by my acting with him. 
I must humor his wishes, just as you, Cicero, 
humored your colleague when you were con- 
sul. But indeed there is no reason why you 
should seek the consul's protection. Every 
one must look out for himself." 

In default of the consuls there was still some 
hope that Pompey might be induced to inter- 
fere, and Cicero sought an interview with him. 
Plutarch says that he slipped out by a back 
door to avoid seeing him ; but Cicero's own 
account is that the interview was granted. 
" When I threw myself at his feet " (he means. 



/ 



EXILE. 



20 1 



I suppose, humiliated himself by asking such 
a favor), " he could not lift me from the ground. 
He could do nothing, he said, against the will 
of Caesar." 

Cicero had now to choose between two 
courses. He might stay and do his best with 
the help of his friends, to resist the passing of 
the law. But this would have ended, it was 
well known, in something like an open battle 
in the streets of Rome. Clodius and his 
partisans were ready to carry their proposal by 
force of arms, and would yield to nothing but 
superior strength. It was possible, even prob- 
able, that in such a conflict Cicero would be 
victorious. But he shrank from the trial, not 
from cowardice, for he had courage enough 
when occasion demanded, not even from un- 
willingness to risk the lives of his friends, 
though this weighed somewhat with him, but 
chiefly because he hated to confess that freedom 
was becoming impossible in Rome, and that 
the strong hand of a master was wanted to give 
any kind of security to life and property. The 
other course was to anticipate the sentence and 
to go into voluntary exile. This was the course 



202 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



which his most powerful friends pressed upon 
him, and this was the course which he chose. 
He left Rome, intending to go to Sicily, where 
he knew that he should find the heartiest of 
welcomes. 

Immediately on his departure Clodius form- 
ally proposed his banishment. Let it be 
enacted,'' so ran the proposition, that, seeing 
that Marcus Tullius Cicero has put Roman 
citizens to death without trial, forging thereto 
the authority of the Senate, that he be for- 
bidden fire and water ; that no one harbor or 
receive him on pain of death ; and that who- 
soever shall move, shall vote, or take any 
steps for the recalling of him, be dealt with 
as a public enemy." The bill was passed, the 
distance within which it was to operate being 
fixed at four hundred miles. The houses of 
the banished man were razed to^the ground, 
the site of the mansion on the Palatine, being 
dedicated to Liberty. His property was partly 
plundered, partly sold by auction. 

Cicero meanwhile had hurried to the south 
of Italy. He found shelter for a while at the 
farm of a friend near Vibo in Brutii (now the 



EXILE. 



203 



Abruzzi), but found it necessary to leave this 
place because it was within the prescribed 
limits. Sicily was forbidden to him by its 
governor, who, though a personal friend, was 
unwilling to displease the party in power. 
Athens, which for many reasons he would 
have liked to choose for his place of exile, 
was unsafe. He had bitter enemies there, 
men who had been mixed up in Catiline's 
conspiracy. The place, too, was within the 
distance, and though this was not very strictly 
insisted upon — as a matter of fact, he did spend 
the greater part of his banishment inside the 
prescribed limit — it might at any moment be 
made a means of annoyance. Atticus invited 
him to take up his residence at his seat at 
Buthrotum in Epirus (now Albania). But the 
proposal did not commend itself to his taste. 
It was out of the way, and would be very 
dreary without the presence of its master, who 
was still at Rome, and apparently intended to 
remain there. After staying for about a fort- 
night at a friend's house near Dyrrachium — » 
the town itself, where he was once very popu- 
lar, for fear of bringing some trouble upon it, 



204 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

he refused to enter — he crossed over to Greece, 
and ultimately settled himself at Thessalonica. 

Long afterward he tells us of a singular 
dream which seems to have given him some 
little comfort at this time. I had lain awake 
for the greater part of the night, but fell into 
a heavy slumber toward morning. I was at 
the point of starting, but my host would not 
allow me to be waked. At seven o'clock, how- 
ever, I rose, and then told my friend this 
dream. I seemed to myself to be wandering 
disconsolately in some lonely place when the 
great Marius met me. His lictors were with 
him, their fasces wreathed with bays. ' Why 
are you so sad ? ' he asked me. * I have been 
wrongly banished from my country,' I answered. 
He then took my hand, and turning to the 
nearest lictor, bade him lead me to his own 
Memorial Hall. ' There,' he said, 'you will be 
safe.'" His friend declared that this dream 
portended a speedy and honorable return. 
Curiously enough it was in the Hall of Marius 
that the decree repealing the sentence of banish- 
ment was actually proposed and passed. 

For the most part he was miserably unhappy 



EXILE. 



205 



and depressed. In letter after letter he poured 
out to Atticus his fears, his complaints, and his 
wants. Why had he listened to the bad advice 
of his friends? He had wished to stay at 
Rome and fight out the quarrel. Why had 
Hortensius advised him to retire from the 
struggle ? It must have been jealousy, jealou sy 
of one whom he knew to be a more successful 
advocate than himself. Why had Atticus hin- 
dered his purposes when he thought of putting 
an end to all his trouble by killing himself ? 
Why were all his friends, why was Atticus him- 
self, so lukewarm in his cause? In one letter 
he artfully reproaches himself for his neglect 
of his friends in times past as the cause of 
their present indifference. But the reproach 
is of course really leveled at them, 

" If ever," he writes in one letter, " fortune 
shall restore me to my country and to you, I 
will certainly take care that of all my friends 
none shall be more rejoiced than you. All my 
duty to you, a duty which I must own in time 
past was sadly wanting, shall be so faithfully 
discharged that you will feel that I have been 
restored to you quite as much as I shall have 



206 ROMAN LTFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

been restored to my brother and to my children. 
For whatever I have wronged you, and indeed 
because I have wronged you, pardon me ; 
for I have wronged myself far worse. I do not 
write this as not knowing that you feel the 
very greatest trouble on my accoant ; but if 
you were and had been under the obligation to 
love me, as much as you actually do love me 
and have loved me, you never would have 
allowed me to lack the wise advice which you 
have so abundantly at your command.'' This 
is perhaps a little obscure, as it is certainly 
somewhat subtle; but Cicero means that Atticus 
had not interested himself in his affairs as 
much as he would have felt bound to do, if he 
(Cicero) had been less remiss in the duties of 
friendship. 

To another correspondent, his wife Terentia, 
he poured out his heart yet more freely. Don't 
think," he writes in one of his letters to her, 

that I write longer letters to others than to 
you, except indeed I have received some long 
communication which I feel I must answer. 
Indeed I have nothing to write ; and in these 
days I find it the most difficult of duties. 




A Vestal Virgin. 



EXILE. 



207 



Writing to you and to my dearest TuUia I 
never can do without floods of tears. I see 
you are utterly miserable, and I wanted you to 
be completely happy. I might have made you 
so. I could have made you had I been less 
timid .... My heart's delight, my deepest 
regret is to think that you, to whom all used to 
look for help, should now be involved in such 
sorrow, such distress! and that I should be 
to blame, I who saved others only to ruin 
myself and mine ! .... As for expenditure, 
let others, who can if they will, undertake it. 
And if you love me, don't distress your health, 
which is already, I know, feeble. All night, all 
day I think of you. I see that you are under- 
taking all imaginable labors on my behalf ; I 
only fear that you will not be able to endure 
them. I am aware that all depends upon you. 
If we are to succeed in what you wish and 
are now trying to compass, take care of your 
health." In another he writes: "Unhappy 
that I am ! to think that one so virtuous, so 
loyal, so honest, so kind, should be so afflicted, 
and all on my account. And my dearest TuUia, 
too, that she should be so unhappy about a 



2o8 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



father in whom she once found so much hap- 
piness. And what shall I say about my dear 
little Cicero? That he should feel the bit- 
terest sorrow and trouble as soon as he began 
to feel any thing ! If all this was really, as 
you write, the work of fate, I could endure it a 
little more easily ; but it was all brought about 
by my fault, thinking that I was loved by men 
who really were jealous of me, and keeping 
aloof from others who were really on my side." 

This is, perhaps, a good opportunity of say- 
ing something about the lady herself. Who 
she was we do not certainly know. There was 
a family of the name in Rome, the most notable 
of whom perhaps was the Terentius Varro* 
whose rashness brought upon his country the 
terrible disaster of the defeat of Cann^. She 
had a half-sister, probably older than herself, of 
the name of Fabia, who was a vestal virgin. 
She brought her husband, to whom she wa" 
married about 78 B.C., a fair dowry, about thred 
thousand five hundred pounds. We have seen 
how affectionately Cicero writes to her during 

' Another of the same name was an eminent man of 
letters of Cicero's own time. 



EXILE. 209 



his exile. She is his darling, his only hope ; 
the mere thought of her makes his eyes over- 
flow with tears. And she seems to have de- 
served all his praise and affection, exerting 
herself to the utmost to help him, and ready to 
impoverish herself to find him the means that he 
needed. Four letters of this period have been 
preserved. There are twenty others belonging 
to the years 50-47 b.c. The earlier of these 
are sufficiently affectionate. When he is about 
to return to Rome from his province (Cilicia), 
she is still the most amiable, the dearest of 
women. Then we begin to see signs of cool- 
ness, yet nothing that would strike us did we 
not know what was afterwards to happen. He 
excuses the rarity of his letters. There is no 
one by whom to send them. If there were, he 
was willing to write. The greetings became 
formal, the superlatives " dearest," " fondest," 
" best," are dropped. " You are glad," he writes 
after the battle of Pharsalia had dashed his 
hopes, " that I have got back safe to Italy ; I 
hope that you may continue to be glad." 
- Don't think of coming," he goes on, " it is a 
long journey and not very safe ; and I don't see 



2IO ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



what good you would do if you should come." 
In another letter he gives directions about 
getting ready his house at Tusculum for the 
reception of guests. The letter is dated on 
the first of October, and he and his friends 
would come probably to stay several days, on 
the seventh. If there was not a tub in the 
bath-room, one must be provided. The greet-^ 
ing is of the briefest and most formal. Mean- 
while we know from what he writes to Atticus 
that he was greatly dissatisfied with the lady s 
conduct. Money matters were at the bottom 
of their quarrel. She was careless, he thinks, 
and extravagant. Though he was a rich man, 
yet he was often in need of ready money, and 
Terentia could not be relied upon to help him. 
His vexation takes form in a letter to Atticus. 
''As to Terentia — there are other things with- 
out number of which I don't speak — what 
can be worse than this ? Y ou wrote to her 
to send me bills for one hundred and eight 
pounds ; for there was so much money left 
in hand. She sent me just ninety pounds, 
and added a note that this was all. If she was 
capable of abstracting such a trifle from so small 



EXILE. 



211 



a sum, don't you see what she would have done 
in matters of real importance ? " The quarrel 
ended in a divorce, a thing far more common 
than, happily, it is among ourselves, but still a 
painful and discreditable end to an union which 
had lasted for more than five-and-twenty years. 
Terentia long survived her husband, dying in 
extreme old age (as much, it was said, as a 
hundred and three years), far on in the reign of 
Augustus; and after a considerable experience 
of matrimony, if it be true that she married 
three or even, according to some acounts, four 
other husbands. 

Terentia 's daughter, TuUia, had a short and 
unhappy life. She was born, it would seem, 
about 79 B.C., and married when fifteen or 
sixteen to a young Roman noble, Piso Frugi 
by name. " The best, the most loyal of men," 
Cicero calls him. He died in 57 B.C., and 
Rome lost, if his father-in-law's praises of him 
may be trusted, an orator of the very highest 
promise. " I never knew any one who sur- 
passed my son-in-law, Piso, in zeal, in industry, 
and, I may fairly say, in ability." The next 
year she married a certain Crassipes, a very 



212 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



shadowy person indeed. We know nothing of 
what manner of man he was, or what became 
of him. But in 50 B.C. Tullia was free to 
marry again. Her third venture was of her 
own or her mother s contriving. Her father 
was at his government in CiHcia, and he hears 
of the affair with surprise. BeHeve me," he 
writes to Atticus, ''nothing could have been 
less expected by me. Tiberius Nero had made 
proposals to me, and I had sent friends to 
discuss the matter with the ladies. But when 
they got to Rome the betrothal had taken 
place. This, I hope, will be a better match. 
I fancy the ladies were very much pleased with 
the young gentleman's complaisance and cour- 
tesy, but do not look for the thorns." The 
thorns," however, were there. A friend who 
kept Cicero acquainted with the news of Rome, 
told him as much, though he wraps up his 
meaning in the usual polite phrases. I con- 
gratulate you," he writes, on your alliance 
with one who is, I really believe, a worthy 
fellow. I do indeed think this of him. If 
there have been some things in which he has 
not done justice to himself, these are now past 



EXILE. 



213 



and gone ; any traces that may be left will soon, 
I am sure, disappear, thanks to your good in- 
fluence and to his respect for Tullia. He is 
not offensive in his errors, and does not seem 
slow to appreciate better things." Tullia, how- 
ever, was not more successful than other wives 
in reforming her husband. Her marriage 
seems to have been unhappy almost from the 
beginning. It was brought to an end by a 
divorce after about three years. Shortly after- 
ward Tullia, who could have been little more 
than thirty, died, to the inconsolable grief of 
her father, My grief," he writes to Atticus, 

passes all consolation. Yet I have done what 
certainly no one ever did before, written a 
treatise for my own consolation. (I will send 
you the book if the copyists have finished it.) 
And indeed there is nothing like it. I write 
day after day, and all day long ; not that I can 
get any good from it, but it occupies me a 
little, not much indeed ; the violence of my 
grief is too much forme. Still I am soothed, 
and do my best to compose, not my feelings, 
indeed, but, if I can, my face." And again: 

Next to your company nothing is more agree- 



214 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



able to me than solitude. Then all my converse 
is with books ; yet this is interrupted by tears; 
these I resist as well as I can ; but at pres- 
ent I fail." At one time he thought of find- 
ing comfort in unusual honors to the dead. 
He would build a shrine of which Tullia should 
be the deity. I am determined," he writes, 
on building the shrine. From this purpose 
I cannot be turned .... Unless the building 
be finished this summer, I shall hold myself 
guilty." He fixes upon a design. He begs 
Atticus, in one of his letters, to buy some 
columns of marble of Chios for the building. 
He discusses the question of the site. Some 
gardens near Rome strike him as a conve- 
nient place. It must be conveniently near if 
it is to attract worshipers. I would sooner 
sell or mortgage, or live on little, than be 
disappointed." Then he thought that he would 
build it on the grounds of his villa. In the 
end he did not build it at all. Perhaps the 
best memorial of Tullia is the beautiful letter 
in which one of Cicero's friends seeks to con- 
sole him for his loss. She had lived," he says, 
*'as long as life was worth living, as long 



EXILE. 



215 



as the republic stood." One passage, though 
it has often been quoted before, I must give. 

I wish to tell you of something which brought 
me no small consolation,, hoping that it may 
also somewhat diminish your sorrow. On my 
way back from Asia, as I was sailing from 
^gina to Megara, I began to contemplate the 
places that lay around me. Behind me was 
yEgina, before me Megara ; on my right hand 
the Piraeus, on my left hand Corinth ; towns 
all of them that were once at the very height 
of prosperity, but now lie ruined and desolate 
before our eyes. I began thus to reflect : 
' Strange ! do we, poor creatures of a day, bear 
it ill if one of us perish of disease, or are 
slain with the sword, we whose life is bound 
to be short, while the dead bodies of so many 
lie here inclosed within so small a compass ? " 

But I am anticipating. When Cicero was in 
exile the republic had yet some years to live ; 
and there were hopes that it might survive alto- 
gether. The exile's prospects, too, began to 
brighten. Caesar had reached for the present 
the height of his ambition, and was busy with 
his province of Gaul. Pompey had quarreled 



2i6 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



with Clodius, whom he found to be utterly 
unmanageable. And Cicero s friend, one Milo, 
of whom I shall have to say more hereafter, 
being the most active of them all, never ceased 
to agitate for his recall. It would be tedious to 
recall all the vicissitudes of the struggle. As 
early as May the Senate passed a resolution 
repealing the decree of banishment, the news of 
it having caused an outburst of joy in the city. 
Accius' drama of '^Telamon" was being acted 
at the time, and the audience applauded each 
senator as he entered the Senate, and rose from 
their places to greet the consul as he came in. 
But the enthusiasm rose to its height when the 
actor who was playing the part of Telamon 
(whose banishment from his country formed 
part of the action of the drama) declaimed with 
significant emphasis the following lines — 

What ! he — the man who still with steadfast heart 
Strove for his country, who in perilous days 
Spared neither life nor fortune, and bestowed 
Most help when most she needed ; who surpassed 
In wit all other men. Father of Gods, 
His house — yea, his ! — I saw devoured by fire ; 
And ye, ungrateful, foolish, without thought 
Of all wherein he served you, could endure 



EXILE, 



217 



To see him banished ; yea, and to this hour 
Suffer that he prolong an exile's day. 

Still obstacle after obstacle was interposed, 
and it was not till the fourth of August that the 
decree passed through all its stages and be- 
came finally law. Cicero, who had been waiting 
at the point of Greece nearest to Italy, to take 
the earliest opportunity of returning, had been 
informed by his friends that he might now 
safely embark. He sailed accordingly on the 
very day when the decree was passed, and 
reached Brundisium on the morrow. It hap- 
pened to be the day on which the foundation of 
the colony was celebrated, and also the birthday 
of Tullia, who had come so far to meet her 
father. The coincidence was observed by the 
townspeople with delight. On the eighth the 
welcome news came from Rome, and Cicero set 
out for the capital. All along my road the 
cities of Italy kept the day of my arrival as a 
holiday ; the ways were crowded with the depu- 
tations which were sent from all parts to con- 
gratulate me. When I approached the city, my 
coming was honored by such a concourse of 
men, such a heartiness of congratulation as are 



2i8 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



past believing. The way from the gates, the 
ascent of the Capitol, the return to my home 
made such a spectacle that in the very height 
of my joy I could not but be sorry that a people 
so grateful had yet been so unhappy, so cruelly 
oppressed." ''That day," he said emphatically, 
that day was as good as immortality to me." 



CHAPTER XI. 



A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

Clodius, who had taken the lead in driving 
Cicero into exile, was of course furious at his 
return, and continued to show him an unceasing 
hostility. His first care was to hinder the res- 
toration of his property. He had contrived to 
involve part at least of this in a considerable 
difificulty. Cicero's house on the Palatine Hill 
had been pulled down and the area dedicated 
—so at least Clodius alleged— to the Goddess 
of Liberty. If this was true, it was sacred for- 
ever ; it could not be restored. The question 
was, Was it true ? This question was referred 
to the Pontiffs as judges of such matters. 
Cicero argued the case before them, and they 
pronounced in his favor. It was now for the 
Senate to act. A motion was made that the 



2 20 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 

site should be restored. Clodius opposed it, 
talking for three hours, till the anger of his 
audience compelled him to bring his speech to 
an end. One of the tribunes in his interest put 
his veto on the motion, but was frightened into 
withdrawing it. But Clodius was not at the 
end of his resources. A set of armed ruffians 
under his command drove out the workmen 
who were rebuilding the house. A few days 
afterwards he made an attack on Cicero himself. 
He was wounded in the struggle which fol- 
lowed, and might, says Cicero, have been kill- 
ed, but," he adds, I am tired of surgery." 

Pompey was another object of his hatred, for 
he knew perfectly well that without his consent 
his great enemy would not have been restored. 
Cicero gives a lively picture of a scene in the 
Senate, in which this hatred was vigorously 
expressed. Pompey spoke, or rather wished 
to speak ; for, as soon as he rose, Clodius' hired 
ruffians shouted at him. All through his speech 
it was the same ; he was interrupted not only 
by shouts but by abuse and curses. When he 
came to an end — and it must be allowed that he 
showed courage ; nothing frightened him : he 



A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, 



221 



said his say and sometimes even obtained 
silence — then Clodius rose. He was met with 
such an uproar from our side (for we had deter- 
mined to give him back as good as he had 
given) that he could not collect his thoughts, 
control his speech, or command his counte- 
nance. This went on from three o'clock, when 
Pompey had only just finished his speech, till 
five. Meanwhile every kind of abuse, even to 
ribald verses, were shouted out against Clodius 
and his sister. Pale with fury he turned to his 
followers, and in the midst of the uproar ask- 
ed them, ' Who is it that is killing the people 
with hunger ? ' ' Pompey,' they answered. 
' Who wants to go to Alexandria ? ' ' Pompey,' 
they answered again. ' And whom do you 
want to go?' ' Crassus,' they said. About 
six o'clock the party of Clodius began, at some 
given signal, it seemed, to spit at our side. 
Our rage now burst out. They tried to drive 
us from our place, and we made a charge. The 
partisans of Clodius fled. He was thrust down 
from the hustings. I then made my escape, 
lest any thing worse should happen." 

A third enemy, and one whom Clodius was 



222 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

destined to find more dangerous than either 
Cicero or Pompey, was Annius Milo. Milo was 
on the mother s side of an old Latin family. 
The name by which he was commonly known 
was probably a nickname given him, it may 
be, in joking allusion to the Milo of Crotona, 
the famous wrestler, who carried an ox on his 
shoulders and ate it in a single day. For Milo 
was a great fighting man, a well-born gladiator, 
one who was for cutting all political knots with 
the sword. He was ambitious, and aspired to 
the consulship ; but the dignity was scarcely 
within his reack. His family was not of the 
highest ; he was deeply in debt ; he had neither 
eloquence nor ability. His best chance, there- 
fore, was to attach himself to some powerful 
friend whose gratitude he might earn. Just 
such a friend he seemed to find in Cicero. He 
saw the great orator s fortunes were very low, 
but they would probably rise again, and he 
would be grateful to those who helped him in 
his adversity. Hence Milo's exertions to bring 
him back from banishment and hence the 
quarrel with Clodius. The two men had their 
bands of hired, or rather purchased, ruffians 



A BRA WL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 223 



about the city, and came into frequent collisions. 
Each indicted the other for murderous assault. 
Each publicly declared that he should take the 
earliest chance of putting his enemy to death. 
What was probably a chance collision brought 
matters to a crisis. 

On the twentieth of January Milo left Rome 
to pay a visit to Lanuvium, a Latin town on 
the Appian road, and about fifteen miles south 
of Rome. It was a small town, much decayed 
from the old days when its revolt against Rome 
was thought to be a thing worth recording ; but 
it contained one of the most famous temples of 
Italy, the dwelling of Juno the Preserver, whose 
image, in its goat-skin robe, its quaint, turned- 
up shoes, with spear in one hand and srfiall 
shield in the other, had a peculiar sacredness. 
Milo was a native of the place, and its dictator; 
and it was his duty on this occasion to nominate 
the chief priest of the temple. He had been 
at a meeting of the Senate in the morning, and 
had remained till the close of the sitting. 
Returning home he had changed his dress and 
shoes, waited a while, as men have to wait, says 
Cicero, while his wife was getting ready, and 



2 24 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



then started. He traveled in a carriage with 
his wife and a friend. Several maid-servants 
and a troop of singing boys belonging to his 
wife followed. Much was made of this great 
retinue of women and boys, as proving that 
Milo had no intention when he started of 
coming to blows with his great enemy. But 
he had also with him a number of armed slaves 
and several gladiators, among whom were two 
famous masters of their art. He had traveled 
about ten miles when he met Clodius, who had 
been delivering an address to the town council 
of Aricia, another Latin town, nearer to the 
capital than Lanuvium, and was now returning 
to Rome. He was on horseback, contrary to 
his usual custom, which was to use a carriage, 
and he had with him thirty slaves armed with 
swords. No person of distinction thought of 
traveling without such attendants. 

The two men passed each other, but Milo's 
Radiators fell out with the slaves of Clodius. 
Clodius rode back and accosted the aggressors 
in a threatening manner. One of the gladia- 
tors replied by wounding him in the shoulder 
with his sword. A number of Milo's slaves 



A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 225 



hastened back to assist their comrades. The 
party of Clodius was overpowered, and Clodius 
himself, exhausted by his wound, took refuge 
in a roadside tavern, which probably marked 
the first stage out of Rome. Milo, thinking that 
now he had gone so far he might go a little 
further and rid himself of his enemy forever, 
ordered his slaves to drag Clodius from his 
refuge and finish him. This was promptly 
done. Cicero indeed declared that the slaves 
did it without orders, and in the belief that 
their master had been killed. But Rome be- 
lieved the other story. The corpse of the 
dead man lay for some time upon the road un- 
cared for, for all his attendants had either fallen 
in the struggle or had crept into hiding-places. 
Then a Roman gentleman on his way to the 
city ordered it to be put into his litter and 
taken to Rome, where it arrived just before 
nightfall. It was laid out in state in the hall 
of his mansion, and his widow stood by show- 
ing the wounds to the sympathizing crowd 
which thronged to see his remains. Next 
day the excitement increased. Two of the 
tribunes suggested that the body should be 



226 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



carried into the market-place, and placed on 
the hustings from which the speaker com- 
monly addressed the people. Then it was 
resolved, at the suggestion of another Clodius, 
a notary, and a client of the family, to do it a 
signal honor. " Thou shalt not bury or burn 
a man within the city " was one of the oldest 
of Roman laws. Clodius, the favorite of the 
people, should be an exception. His body was 
carried into the Hall of Hostilius, the usual 
meeting-place of the Senate. The benches, 
the tables, the platform from which the orators 
spoke, the wooden tablets on which the clerks 
wrote their notes, were collected to make a 
funeral pile on which the corpse was to be con- 
sumed. The hall caught fire, and was burned 
to the ground ; another large building adjoin- 
ing it, the Hall of Porcius, narrowly escaped 
the same fate. The mob attacked several 
houses, that of Milo among them, and was 
with difficulty repulsed. 

It had been expected that Milo would 
voluntarily go into exile ; but the burning of 
the senate-house caused a strong reaction of 
feeling of which he took advantage. He re- 



A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, 227 



turned to Rome, and provided to canvass for 
the consulship, making a present in money 
(which may be reckoned at five-and-twenty 
shillings) to every voter. The city was in a 
continual uproar ; though the time for the new 
consuls to enter on their office was long past, 
they had not even been elected, nor was there 
any prospect, such was the violence of the 
rival candidates, of their being so. At last the 
Senate had recourse to the only man v/ho 
seemed able to deal with the situation, and 
appointed Pompey sole consul. Pompey pro- 
posed to institute for the trial of Milo s case 
a special court with a special form of pro- 
cedure. The limits of the time which it was 
to occupy were strictly laid down. Three 
days were to be given to the examination of 
witnesses, one to the speeches of counsel, the 
prosecution being allowed two hours only, the 
defense three. After a vain resistance on the 
part of Milo's friends, the proposal was carried, 
Pompey threatening to use force if necessary. 
Popular feeling now set very strongly against 
the accused. Pompey proclaimed that he went 
in fear of his life from his violence ; refused to 



2 28 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 

appear in the Senate lest he should be assas- 
sinated, and even left his house to live in 
his gardens, which could be more effectually 
guarded by soldiers. In the Senate Milo was 
accused of having arms under his clothing, a 
charge which he had to disprove by lifting up 
his under garment. Next a freedman came 
forward, and declared that he and four others 
had actually seen the murder of Clodius, and 
that having mentioned the fact, they had 
been seized and shut up for two months in 
Milos counting-house. Finally a sheriffs 
officer, if we may so call him, deposed that 
another important witness, one of Milo's slaves, 
had been forcibly taken out of his hands by 
the partisans of the accused. 

On the eighth of April the trial was begun., 
The first witness called was a friend who had 
been with Clodius on the day of his death. 
His evidence made the case look very dark 
against Milo, and the counsel who was to cross- 
examine him on behalf of the accused was re- 
ceived with such angry cries that he had to take 
refuge on the bench with the presiding judge. 
Milo was obliged to ask for the same protection. 



A BRA WL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, 229 



Pompey resolved that better order should 
be kept for the future, and occupied all the 
approaches to the court with troops. The rest 
of the witnesses were heard and cross-examined 
without interruption. April nth was the last 
day of the trial. Three speeches were delivered 
for the prosecution ; for the defense one only, 
and that by Cicero. It had been suggested 
that he should take the bold line of arguing that 
Clodius was a traitor, and that the citizen who 
slew him had deserved well of his country. But 
he judged it better to follow another course,and 
to show that Clodius had been the aggressor, 
having deliberately laid an ambush for Milo, 
of whose meditated journey to Lanuvium he 
was of course aware. Unfortunately for his 
client the case broke down. Milo had evi- 
dently left Rome and the conflict had happened 
much earlier than was said, because the body 
of the murdered man had reached the capital 
not later than five o'clock in the afternoon. 
This disproved the assertion that Clodius had 
loitered on his way back to Rome till the grow- 
ing darkness gave him an opportunity of at- 
tacking his adversaries. Then it came out that 



230 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



Milo had had in his retinue, besides the women 
and boys, a number of fighting men. Finally 
there was the damning fact, established, it would 
seem, by competent witnesses, that Clodius had 
been dragged from his hiding-place and put to 
death. Cicero too lost his presence of mind. 
The sight of the city, in which all the shops 
were shut in expectation of a riot, the presence 
of the soldiers in court, and the clamor of a 
mob furiously hostile to the accused and his 
advocate, confounded him, and he spoke feebly 
and hesitatingly. The admirable oration which 
has come down to us, and professes to have 
been delivered on this occasion, was really 
written afterwards. The jury, which was 
allowed by common consent to have been one 
of the best ever assembled, gave a verdict of 
guilty. Milo went into banishment at Mar- 
seilles — a punishment which he seems to have 
borne very easily, if it is true that when Cicero 
excused himself for the want of courage which 
had marred the effect of his defense, he an- 
swered, ''It was all for the best ; if you had 
spoken better I should never have tasted these 
admirable Marseilles mullets." 



A BRA WL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 231 

Naturally he tired of the mullets before long. 
When C^sar had made himself master of 
Rome, he hoped to be recalled from banish- 
ment. But Caesar did not want him, and pre- 
ferred to have him where he was. Enraged 
at this treatment, he came over to Italy and 
attempted to raise an insurrection in favor 
of Pompey. The troops whom he endeavored 
to corrupt refused to follow him. He retreated 
with his few followers into the extreme south 
of the peninsula, and was there killed. 



CHAPTER XII 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA. 

" From his earliest years," so runs the char- 
acter that has come down to us of Cato, " he 
was resolute to obstinacy. Flattery met with 
a rough repulse, and threats with resistance. 
He never laughed, and his smile was of the 
slightest. Not easily provoked, his anger, once 
roused, was implacable. He learned but slowly, 
but never forgot a thing once acquired ; he was 
obedient to his teachers, but wanted to know 
the reason of every thing." The stories told of 
his boyhood bear out this character. Here is 
one of them. His tutor took him to Sulla's 
house. It was in the evil days of the Proscrip- 
tion, and there were signs of the bloody work 
that was going on. " Why does no one kill this 
man ? " he asked his teacher. " Because, my 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA. 233 



son, they fear him more than they hate him/* 
was the answer. Why then," was the re- 
joinder, have you not given me a sword that 
I may set my country free ? " The tutor, as it 
may be supposed, carried him off in haste. 

Like most young Romans he began Hfe as a 
soldier, and won golden opinions not only by 
his courage, which indeed was common enough 
in a nation that conquered the world, but by his 
temperance and diligent performance of duty. 
His time of service ended, he set out on his 
travels, accepting an invitation from the tribu- 
tary king of Galatia, who happened to be an 
old friend of the family, to visit him. We get 
an interesting little picture of a Roman of the 
upper class on a tour. At dawn he would 
send on a baker and a cook to the place which 
he intended to visit. These would enter the 
town in a most unpretending fashion, and if 
their master did not happen to have a friend or 
acquaintance in the place, would betake them- 
selves to an inn, and there prepare for their 
masters accommodation without troubling any 
one. It was only when there was no inn that 
they went to the magistrates and asked for 



- 234 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

entertainment ; and they were always content 
with what was assigned. Often they met with 
but scanty welcome and attention, not enforcing 
their demands with the customary threats, so 
that Cato on his arrival found nothing prepared. 
Nor did their master create a more favorable 
impression, sitting as he did quietly on his 
luggage, and seeming to accept the situation. 
Sometimes, however, he would send for the 
town authorities and say, " You had best give 
up these mean ways, my inhospitable friends ; 
you won't find that all your visitors are Catos." 
Once at least he found himself, as he thought, 
magnificently received. Approaching Antioch, 
he found the road lined on either side with 
troops of spectators. The men stood in one 
company, the boys in another. Every body 
was in holiday dress. Some — these were the 
magistrates and priests — ^wore white robes and 
garlands of flowers. Cato, supposing that all 
these preparations were intended for himself, 
was annoyed that his servants had not pre- 
vented them. But he was soon undeceived. 
An old man ran out from the crowd, and with- 
out so much as greeting the new comer, cried, 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA. 235 



Where did you leave Demetrius ? When 
will he come ? Demetrius was Pompey s 
freedman, and had some of his master s great- 
ness reflected on him. Cato could only turn 
away muttering, Wretched place ! " 

Returning to Rome he went through the 
usual course of honors, always discharging his 
duties with the utmost zeal and integrity, and 
probably, as long as he filled a subordinate 
place, with great success. It was when states- 
manship was wanted that he began to fail. 

In the affair of the conspiracy of Catiline 
Cato stood firmly by Cicero, supporting the 
proposition to put the conspirators to death in 
a powerful speech, the only speech of all that 
he made that was preserved. This preserva- 
tion was due to the forethought of Cicero, who 
put the fastest writers whom he could find to 
relieve each other in taking down the oration. 
This, it is interesting to be told, was the begin- 
ning of shorthand. 

Cato, like Cicero, loved and believed in the 
republic ; but he was much more uncompro- 
mising, more honest perhaps we may say, but 
certainly less discreet in putting his principles 



236 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

into action. He set himself to oppose the accu- 
mulation of power in the hands of Pompey 
and C^sar ; but he lacked both dignity and 
prudence, and he accomplished nothing. When, 
for instance, C^sar, returning from Spain, peti- 
tioned the Senate for permission to become a 
candidate for the consulship without entering 
the city — to enter the city would have been to 
abandon his hopes of a triumph — Cato con- 
descended to use the arts of obstruction in 
opposing him. He spoke till sunset against 
the proposition, and it failed by sheer lapse of 
time. Yet the opposition was fruitless. Caesar 
of course abandoned the empty honor, and 
secured the reality, all the more certainly be- 
cause people felt that he had been hardly used. 
And so he continued to act, always seeking to 
do right, but always choosing the very worst 
way of doing it ; anxious to serve his country, 
but always contriving to injure it. Even in that 
which, we may say, best became him in his life, 
in the leaving of it (if we accept for the moment 
the Roman view of the morality of suicide), he 
was not doing his best for Rome. Had he 
been willing to live (for Csesar was ready to 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA. 837 



spare him, as he was always ready to spare 
enemies who could not harm him), there was 
yet good for him to do ; in his hasty impatience 
of what he disapproved, he preferred to deprive 
his country of its most honest citizen. 

We must not omit a picture so characteristic 
of Roman life as the story of his last hours. 
The last army of the republic had been de- 
stroyed at Thapsus, and Caesar was undisputed 
master of the world. Cato vainly endeavored 
to stir up the people of Utica, a town near 
Carthage,in which he had taken up his quarters; 
when they refused, he resolved to put an end 
to his life. A kinsman of Casar, who was pre- 
paring to intercede with the conqueror for the 
lives of the vanquished leaders, begged Cato's 
help in revising his speech. " For you," he 
said, " I should think it no shame to clasp his 
hands and fall at his knees." " Were I willing 
to take my life at his hands," replied Cato, " I 
should go alone to ask it. But I refuse to live 
by the favor of a tyrant. Still, as there are 
three hundred others for whom you are to 
intercede, let us see what can be done with the 
speech." This business finished, he took an 



238 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



affectionate leave of his friend, commending to 
his good offices his son and his friends. On his 
son he laid a strict injunction not to meddle 
with public life. Such a part as was worthy of 
the name of Cato no man could take again ; to 
take any other would be shameful. Then follow- 
ed the bath, and after the bath, dinner, to which 
he had invited a number of friends, magistrates 
of the town. He sat at the meal, instead of 
reclining. This had been his custom ever since 
the fated day of Pharsalia. After dinner, over 
the wine, there was much learned talk, and this 
not other than cheerful in tone. But when the 
conversation happened to turn on one of the 
favorite maxims of the Stoics, Only the 
good man is free ; the bad are slaves," Cato 
expressed himself with an energy and even a 
fierceness that made the company suspect some 
terrible resolve. The melancholy silence that 
ensued warned the speaker that he had betrayed 
himself, and he hastened to remove the sus- 
picion by talking on other topics. After dinner 
he took his customary walk, gave the necessary 
orders to the officers on guard, and then sought 
his chamber. Here he took up the Phaedo, 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA. 239 



the famous dialogue in which Socrates, on the 
day when he is to drink the poison, discusses 
the immortality of the soul. He had almost 
finished the book, when, chancing to turn his 
eyes upwards, he perceived that his sword had 
been removed. His son had removed it 
while he sat at dinner. He called a slave and 
asked, Who has taken my sword ? " As the 
man said nothing, he resumed his book ; but in 
the course of a few minutes, finding that search 
was not being made, he asked for the sword 
again. Another interval followed ; and still it 
was not forthcoming. His anger was now 
roused. He vehemently reproached the slaves, 
and even struck one of them with his fist, which 
he injured by the blow. My son and my 
slaves,'' he said, are betraying me to the 
enemy." He would listen to no entreaties, 
*^Am I a madman," he said, that I am 
stripped of my arms ? Are you going to bind 
my hands and give me up to C^sar ? As for 
the sword I can do without it ; I need but 
hold my breath or dash my head against the 
wall. It is idle to think that you can keep a 
man of my years alive against his will." It was 



240 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



felt to be impossible to persist in the face of 
this determination, and a young slave-boy 
brought back the sword. Cato felt the weapon, 
and finding that the blade was straight and the 
edge perfect, said, Now I am my own master." 
He then read the Phaedo again from beginning 
to end, and afterwards fell into so profound 
a sleep that persons standing outside the 
chamber heard his breathing. About midnight 
he sent for his physician and one of his freed- 
men. The freedman was commissioned to 
inquire whether his friends had set sail. The 
physician he asked to bind up his wounded 
hand, a request which his attendants heard 
with delight, as it seemed to indicate a resolve 
to live. He again sent to inquire about his 
friends and expressed his regret at the rough 
weather which they seemed likely to have. The 
birds were now beginning to twitter at the 
approach of dawn, and he fell into a short sleep. 
The freedman now returned with news that 
the harbor was quiet. When he found himself 
again alone, he stabbed himself with the sword, 
but the blow, dealt as it was by the wounded 
hand, was not fatal. He fell fainting on the 




Marcus Junius Brutus. 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA. 241 



couch, knocking down a counting board which 
stood near, and groaning. His son with others 
rushed into the chamber, and the physician, 
finding that the wound was not mortal, pro- 
ceeded to bind it up. Cato, recovering his 
consciousness, thrust the attendants aside, and 
tearing open the wound, expired. ^ 

If the end of Cato's life was its noblest part, 
it is still more true that the fame of Brutus 
rests on one memorable deed. He was known, 
indeed, as a young man of promise, with whose 
education special pains had been taken, and 
who had a genuine love for letters and learn- 
ing. He was free, it would seem, from some 
of the vices of his age, but he had serious 
faults. Indeed the one transaction of his ear- 
lier life with which we happen to be well ac- 
quainted is very little to his credit. And this, 
again, is so characteristic of one side of Rom- 
an life that it should be told in some detail. 

Brutus had married the daughter of a cer- 
tain Appius Claudius, a kinsman of the notori- 
ous Clodius, and had accompanied his father- 
in-law to his province, Cilicia. He took the op- 
portunity of increasing his means by lending 



242 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 



money to the provincials. Lending money, it 
must be remembered, was not thought a dis- 
creditable occupation even for the very noblest. 
To lend money upon interest was, indeed, the 
only way of making an investment, besides the 
buying of land, that was available to the Rom- 
an capitalist. But Brutus was more than a 
money-lender, he was an usurer ; that is, he 
sought to extract an extravagantly high rate 
of interest from his debtors. And this greed 
brought him into collision with Cicero. 

A certain Scaptius had been agent for Brutus 
in lending money to the town of Salamis in 
Cyprus. Under the government of Claudius, 
Scaptius had had every thing his own way. He 
had been appointed to a command in the town, 
had some cavalry at his disposal, and extorted 
from the inhabitants what terms he pleased, 
shutting up, it is told us, the Senate in their 
council-room till five of them perished of hun- 
ger. Cicero heard of this monstrous deed as he 
was on his vv^ay to his province ; he peremp- 
torily refused the request of Scaptius for a re- 
newal of his command, saying that he had re- 
solved not to grant such posts to any person 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA. 243 

engaged in trading or money-lending. Still, for 
Brutus' sake — and it was not for some time that 
it came out that Brutus was the principal — he 
would take care that the money should be paid. 
This the town was ready to do ; but then came 
in the question of interest. An edict had been 
published that this should never exceed twelve 
per cent., or one per cent, monthly, that being 
the customary way of payment. But Scaptius 
pleaded his bond, which provided for four per 
cent, monthly, and pleaded also a special edict 
that regulations restraining interest were not 
to apply to Salamis. The town protested that 
they could not pay if such terms were exacted 
— terms which would double the principal. 
They could not, they said, have met even the 
smaller claim, if it had not been for the liber- 
ality of the governor, who had declined the 
customary presents. Brutus was much vexed. 

"Even when he asks me a favor," writes 
Cicero to Atticus, " there is always something 
arrogant and churlish : still he moves laughter 
more than anger." 

When the civil war broke out between 
Cffisar and Pompey, it was expected that 



244 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



Brutus would attach himself to the former. 
Pompey, who had put his father to death, he 
had no reason to love. But if he was unscru- 
pulous in some things, in politics he had prin- 
ciples which he would not abandon, the 
strongest of these, perhaps, being that the side 
of which Cato approved was the side of the 
right. Pompey received his new adherent with 
astonishment and delight, rising from his chair 
to greet him. He spent most of his time in 
camp in study, being ingrossed on the very eve 
of the battle in making an epitome of Polybius, 
the Greek historian of the Second Punic War. 
He passed through the disastrous day of Phar- 
salia unhurt, Caesar having given special orders 
that his life was to be spared. After the battle, 
the conqueror not only pardoned him but treated 
him with the greatest kindness, a kindness for 
which, for a time at least, he seems not to have 
been ungrateful. But there were influences at 
work which he could not resist. There was his 
friendship with Cassius, who had a passionate 
hatred against usurpers, the remembrance of 
how Cato had died sooner than submit himself 
to Csesar, and, not least, the association of his 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA. 245 

». y I — ■ — — — — 

name, which he was not permitted to forget. 
The statue of the old patriot who had driven 
out the Tarquins was covered with such in- 
scriptions as, " Brutus, would thou wert alive ! " 
and Brutus' own chair of office — he was praetor 
at the time — was found covered with papers on 
which were scribbled, Brutus, thou sleepest," 
or, ''A true Brutus art thou,'' and the like. 
How he slew Caesar I have told already ; how 
he killed himself in despair after the second 
battle of Philippi may be read elsewhere. 

Porcia, the daughter of Cato, was left a 
widow in 48 B.C., and married three years 
afterwards her cousin Brutus, who divorced 
his first wife Claudia in order to marry her. 
She inherited both the literary tastes and the 
opinions of her father, and she thought herself 
aggrieved when her husband seemed unwilling 
to confide his plans to her. Plutarch thus tells 
her story, his authority seeming to be a little 
biography which one of her sons by her first 
husband afterwards wrote of his stepfather. 

She wounded herself in the thigh with a knife 
such as barbers use for cutting the nails. The 
wound was deep, the loss of blood great, and 



246 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

the pain and fever that followed acute. Her 
husband was in the greatest distress, when his 
wife thus addressed him : ' Brutus, it was a 
daughter of Cato who became your wife, not 
merely to share your bed and board, but to be the 
partner of your adversity and your prosperity. 
You give me no cause to complain, but what 
proof can I give you of my affection if I may 
not bear with you your secret troubles. Women, 
I know, are weak creatures, ill fitted to keep 
secrets. Yet a good training and honest com- 
pany may do much, and this, as Cato's daughter 
and wife to Brutus, I have had.' She then 
showed him the wound, and told him that she 
had inflicted it upon herself to prove her 
courage and constancy." For all this resolution 
she had something of a woman's weakness. 
When her husband had left the house on the 
day fixed for the assassination, she could not 
conceal her agitation. She eagerly inquired of 
all who entered how Brutus fared, and at last 
fainted in the hall of her house. In the midst 
of the business of the senate-house Brutus 
heard that his wife was dying. 

Porcia was not v/ith her husband during the 



i 



CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA, 



247 



campaigns that ended at Philippi, but remained 
in Rome. She is said to have killed herself by 
swallowing the live coals from a brazier, when 
her friends kept from her all the means of self- 
destruction. This story is scarcely credible ; 
possibly it means that she suffocated herself 
with the fumes of charcoal. That she should 
commit suicide suited all the traditions of her 
life. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE. 

It was usual for a Roman statesman, after 
filling the office of praetor or consul, to 
undertake for a year or more the government 
of one of the provinces. These appointments 
were indeed the prizes of the profession of 
politics. The new governor had a magnificent 
outfit from the treasury. We hear of as much 
as one hundred and fifty thousand pounds 
having been allowed for this purpose. Out 
of this something might easily be economized. 
Indeed we hear of one governor who left the 
whole of his allowance put out at interest in 
Rome. And in the province itself splendid 
gains might be, and indeed commonly were, 
got. Even Cicero, who, if we may trust his 



A GO VERNOR IN HIS PRO VINCE. 249 



own account of his proceedings, was exception- 
ally just, and not only just, but even generous in 
his dealings with the provincials, made, as we 
have seen, the very handsome profit of twenty 
thousand pounds out of a year of office. 
Verres, who, on the other hand, was excep- 
tionally rapacious, made three hundred and 
fifty thousand pounds in three years, besides 
collecting works of art of incalculable value. 
But the honors and profits to which most of 
his contemporaries looked forward with eager- 
ness did not attract Cicero. He did not care 
to be absent from the center of political life, 
and felt himself to be at once superior to and 
unfitted for the pettier affairs of a provincial 
government. 

He had successfully avoided the appointment 
after his prstorship and again after his consul- 
ship. But the time came when it was forced 
upon him. Pompey in his third consulship 
had procured the passing of a law by which it 
was provided that all senators who had filled 
; the office of przetor or consul should cast lots 
for the vacant provinces. Cicero had to take 
his chance with the rest, and the ballot gave 



250 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



him Cilicia. This was in B.C. 51, and Cicero 
was in his fifty-sixth year. 

Ciliciawas a province of considerable extent, 
including, as it did, the south-eastern portion of 
Asia Minor, together with the island of Cyprus. 
The position of its governor was made more 
anxious by the neighborhood of Rome's most 
formidable neighbors, the Parthians. who but 
two years before had cut to pieces the army of 
Crassus. Two legions, numbering twelve 
thousand troops besides auxiliaries, were 
stationed in the province, having attached to 
them between two and three thousand cavalry. 

Cicero started to take up his appointment on 
May I St, accompanied by his brother, who, 
having served with distinction under Caesarin 
Gaul, had resigned his command to act as 
lieutenant in Cilicia. At Cumae he received a 
levee of visitors — a ''little Rome," he says. 
Hortensius was among them, and this though 
in very feeble health (he died before Cicero's 
return). He asked me for my instructions. 
Every thing else I left with him in general 
terms, but I begged him especially not to 
allow as far as in him lay, the government of 



A GO VERNOR IN HIS PRO VINCE, 25 1 



my province to be continued to me into another 
year/' On the 17th of the month he reached 
Tarentum, where he spent three days with 
Pompey. He found him " ready to defend the 
State from the dangers that we dread." The 
shadows of the civil war, which was to break 
out in the year after Cicero's return, were 
already gathering. At Brundisium, the port 
of embarkation for the East, he was detained 
partly by indisposition, partly by having to 
wait for one of his officials for nearly a 
fortnight. He reached Actium, in north- 
western Greece, on the 15th of June. He 
would have liked to proceed thence by land, 
being, as he tells us, a bad sailor, and having 
in view the rounding of the formidable pro- 
montory Leucate ; but there was a difficulty 
about his retinue, without which he could not 
maintain the state which became a governor 
en route for his province. Eleven more days 
brought him to Athens. So far," he vmtes 
from this place> no expenditure of public or 
private money has been made on me or any 
of my retinue. I have convinced all my people 
that they must do their best for my character. 



252 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 

So far all has gone admirably. The thing has 
been noticed, and is greatly praised by the 
Greeks." ''Athens," he writes again, ''delighted 
me much ; the city with all its beauty, the great 
affection felt for you " (he is writing, it will be 
remembered, to Atticus, an old resident), " and 
the good feeling towards myself, much more, 
too, its philosophical studies." He was able 
before he left to do the people a service, 
rescuing from the hands of the builder the 
house of Epicurus, which the council of Areo- 
pagus, with as little feeling for antiquity as a 
modern town council, had doomed. Then he 
went on his way, grumbling at the hardships 
of a sea voyage in July, at the violence of the 
winds, at the smallness of the local vessels. 
He reached Ephesus on July 22nd, without 
being sea-sick, as he is careful to tell us, and 
found a vast number of persons who had come 
to pay their respects to him. All this was 
pleasant enough, but he was peculiarly anxious 
to get back to Rome. Rome indeed to the 
ordinary Roman was — a few singular lovers of 
the country, as Virgil and Horace, excepted— as 
Paris is to the Parisian. " Make it absolutely 



A GO VERNOR IN HIS PRO VINCE. 253 



certain," he writes to Atticus, ^^hat I am to be 
in office for a year only ; that there is not to be 
even an intercalated month." From Ephesus 
he journeys, complaining of the hot and dusty 
roads, to Tralles, and from Tralles, one of the 
cities of his province, to Laodicea, which he 
reached July 31st, exactly three months after 
starting.^ The distance, directly measured, 
may be reckoned at something less than a 
thousand miles. 

He seems to have found the province in a 
deplorable condition. I staid," he writes, 
''three days at Laodicea, three again at Apamca, 
and as many at Synnas, and heard nothing 
except complaints that they could not pay the 
poll-tax imposed upon them, that every one's 
property was sold ; heard, I say, nothing but 
complaints and groans, and monstrous deeds 
which seemed to suit not a man but some 
horrid wild beast. Still it is some alleviation 
to these unhappy towns that they are put to 
no expense for me or for any of my followers. 
I will not receive the fodder which is my legal 

* Forty-seven days was reckoned a very short time for 
accomplishing the journey. 



ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA VS OF CICERO. 



due, nor even the wood. Sometimes I have 
accepted four beds and a roof over my head ; 
often not even this, preferring to lodge in a 
tent. The consequence of all this is an incredi- 
ble concourse of people from town and country 
anxious to see me. Good heavens ! my very 
approach seems to make them revive, so com- 
pletely do the justice, moderation, and clemency 
of your friend surpass all expectation." It 
must be allowed that Cicero was not unaccus- 
tomed to sound his own praises. 

Usury was one of the chief causes of this 
widespread distress ; and usury, as we have seen, 
was practiced even by Romans of good repute. 
We have seen an honorable man," such as 
Brutus, exacting an interest of nearly fifty per 
cent. Pompey was receiving, at what rate of 
interest we do not know, the enormous sum of 
^ nearly one hundred thousand pounds per annum 
from the tributary king of Cappadocia, and this 
was less than he was entitled to. Other debtors 
of this impecunious king could get nothing ; 
every thing went into Pompey's purse, and the 
whole country was drained of coin to the very 
uttermost. In the end, however, Cicero did 



A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE, 255 



manage to get twenty thousand pounds for 
Brutus, who was also one of the king's creditors. 
We cannot but wonder, if such things went on 
under a governor who was really doing his best 
to be moderate and just, what was the condition 
of the provincials under ordinary rulers. 

While Cicero was busy with the condition of 
his province, his attention was distracted by 
what we may call a Parthian ''scare." The 
whole army of this people was said to have 
crossed the Euphrates under the command of 
Pacorus, the king s son. The governor of Syria 
had not yet arrived. The second in command 
had shut himself up with all his troops in An- 
tioch. Cicero marched into Cappadocia, which 
bordered the least defensible side of Cilicia, and 
took up a position at the foot of Mount Taurus. 
Next came news that Antioch was besieged. 
On hearing this he broke up his camp, crossed 
the Taurus range by forced marches, and occu- 
pied the passes into Syria. The Parthians 
raised the siege of Antioch, and suffered con- 
siderably at the hands of Cassius during their 
retreat. 

Though Cicero never crossed swords with the 



2S6 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



Parthians, he founder contrived an opportunity 
of distinguishing himself as a soldier. The 
independent mountaineers of the border were 
attacked and defeated ; Cicero was saluted as 
"Imperator'on the field of battle by his soldiers, 
and had the satisfaction of occupying for some 
days the position which Alexander the Great 
had taken up before the battle of Issus. " And 
he," says Cicero, who always relates his military 
achievements with something like a smile on 
his face, " was a somewhat better general than 
either you or I." He next turned his arms 
against the Free Cilicians, investing in regular 
form with trenches, earthworks, catapults, and 
all the regular machinery of a siege, their strong- 
hold Pindenissum. At the end of forty-seven 
days the place surrendered. Cicero gave the 
plunder of the place to his host, reserving the 
horses only for public purposes. A considerable 
sum was realized by the sale of slaves. " Who 
in the world are these Pindenissi ? who are 
they?" you will say. "I never heard the 
name." " Well, what can I do ? I can't make 
Cilicia another ^tolia, or another Macedonia." 
The campaign was concluded about the middle 



A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE. 



257 



of December, and the governor, handing over 
the army to his brother, made his way to Lao- 
dicea. From this place he writes to Atticus in 
language that seems to us self-glorious and 
boastful, but still has a ring of honesty about it. 

I left Tarsus for Asia (the Roman province so 
called) on June 5th, followed by such admira- 
tion as I cannot express from the cities of 
Cilicia, and especially from the people of Tarsus. 
When I had crossed the Taurus there was a 
marvelous eagerness to see me in Asia as far 
as my districts extended. During six months 
of my government they had not received a 
single requisition from me, had not had a single 
person quartered upon them. Year after year 
before my time this part of the year had been 
turned to profit in this way. The wealthy cities 
used to pay large sums of money not to have 
to find winter quarters for the soldiers. Cyprus 
paid more than ^48,000 on this account; and 
from this island — I say it without exaggeration 
and in sober truth — not a single coin was levied 
while I was in power. In return for these 
benefits, benefits at which they are simply aston^ 
ished. I will not allow any but verbal honors 



JS8 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



to be voted to me. Statues, temples,chariots of 
bronze, I forbid. In nothing do I make myself 
a trouble to the cities, though it is possible 
I do so to you, while I thus proclaim my own 
praises. Bear with me, if you love me. This is 
the rule which you would have had me follow. 
My journey through Asia had such results that 
even the famine — and than famine there is no 
more deplorable calamity — which then prevail- 
ed in the country (there had been no harvest) 
was an event for me to desire ; for wherever I 
journeyed, without force, without the help of 
law, without reproaches, but my simple in- 
fluence and expostulations, I prevailed upon the 
Greeks and Roman citizens, who had secreted 
the corn, to engage to convey a large quantity 
to the various tribes.'' He writes again : 
I see that you are pleased with my modera- 
tion and self-restraint. You would be much 
more pleased if you were here. At the sessions 
which I held at Laodicea for all my districts, 
excepting Cilicia, from February 15th to May 
1st, I effected a really marvelous work. 
Many cities were entirely freed from their debts, 
many greatly relieved, and all of them enjoy 



A GO VERNOR IN HIS PRO VINCE. 259 



ing their own laws and courts, and so obtaining 
self-government received new life. There were 
two ways in which I gave them the opportunity 
of either throwing of¥ or greatly lightening the 
burden of debt. First : they have been put to 
no expense under my rule — I do not exagger- 
ate ; I positively say that they have not to 
spend a farthing. Then again : the cities had 
been atrociously robbed by their own Greek 
magistrates. I myself questioned the men who 
had borne office during the last ten years. 
They confessed and, without being publicly 
disgraced, made restitution. In other respects 
my government, without being wanting in 
address, is marked by clemency and courtesy. 
There is none of the difficulty, so usual in the 
provinces, of approaching me ; no introduction 
by a chamberlain. Before dawn I am on foot 
in my house, as I used to be in old days when 
I was a candidate for office. This is a great 
matter here and a popular, and to myself, from 
my old practice in it, has not yet been trouble- 
some." 

He had other less serious cares. One Cffilius, 
who was good enough to keep him informed of 



26o ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



what was happening at Rome, and whom we 
find filling his letters with an amusing mixture 
of politics, scandal, and gossip, makes a modest 
request for some panthers, which the governor 
of so wild a country would doubtless have no 
difficulty in procuring for him. He was a can- 
didate for the office of aedile, and wanted the 
beasts for the show which he would have to 
exhibit. Cicero must not forget to look after 
them as soon as he hears of the election. In 
nearly all my letters I have written to you about 
the panthers. It will be discreditable to you, 
that Patiscus should have sent to Curio ten pan- 
thers, and you not many times more. These 
ten Curio gave me, and ten others from Africa. 
If you will only remember to send for hunters 
from Cibyra,and also send letters to Pamphylia 
(for there, I understand, more are taken than 
elsewhere), you will succeed. I do beseech you 
look after this matter. You have only to give 
the orders. I have provided people to keep 
and transport the animals when once taken.'' 
The governor would not hear of imposing the 
charge of capturing the panthers on the hunt- 
ers of the province. Still he would do his best 



A GO VERNOR IN HIS PRO VINCE. 261 



to oblige his friend. The matter of the pan- 
thers is being diHgently attended to by the 
persons who are accustomed to hunt them ; 
but there is a strange scarcity of them, and the 
few that there are complain grievously, saying 
that they are the only creatures in my prov- 
ince that are persecuted." 

From Laodicea Cicero returned to Tarsus, 
the capital of his province, wound up the 
affairs of his government, appointed an acting 
governor, and started homewards early in 
August On his way he paid a visit to 
Rhodes, wishing to show to his son and neph- 
ew (they had accompanied him to his gov- 
ernment) the famous school of eloquence in 
which he had himself studied. Here he heard 
with much regret of the death of Hortensius. 
He had seen the great orator s son at Laodicea, 
where he was amusing himself in the disrep- 
utable company of some gladiators, and had 
asked him to dinner for his father s sake, he 
says. His stay at Rhodes was probably of 
some duration, for he did not reach Ephesus 
till the first of October. A tedious passage of 
fourteen days brought him to Athens. On his 



262 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



journey westwards Tiro, his confidential serv- 
ant, was seized with illness, and had to be left 
behind at Patr^. Tiro was a slave, though 
afterwards set free by his master ; but he was 
a man of great and varied accomplishments, 
and Cicero writes to him as he might to the 
very dearest of his friends. There is nothing 
stranger in all that we know of Roman Life" 
than the presence in it of such men as Tiro. 
Nor is there any thing, we might even venture 
to say, quite like it elsewhere in the whole his- 
tory of the world. Now and then, in the days 
when slavery still existed in the Southern 
States of America, mulatto and quadroon slaves 
might have been found who in point of ap- 
pearance and accomplishments were scarcely 
different from their owners. But there was 
always a taint, or what was reckoned as a taint, 
of negro blood in the men and women so sit- 
uated. In Rome it must have been common 
to see men, possibly better born (for Greek 
might even be counted better than Roman 
descent), and probably better educated than 
their masters, who had absolutely no rights as 
human beings, and could be tortured or killed 



A GO VERNOR IN HIS PRO VINCE. ^ 263 



just as cruelty or caprice might suggest To 
Tiro, man of culture and acute intellect as 
he was, there must have been an unspeakable 
bitterness in the thought of servitude, even 
under a master so kindly and affectionate as 
Cicero. One shudders to think what the 
feelings of such a man must have been when 
he was the chattel of a Verres, a Clodius, or a 
Catiline. It is pleasant to turn away from the 
thought, which is the very darkest perhaps in 
the repulsive subject of Roman slavery, to 
observe the sympathy and tenderness which 
Cicero shows to the sick man from whom he 
has been reluctantly compelled to part The 
letters to Tiro fill one of the sixteen books of 
Letters to Friends.'' They are twenty-seven 
in number, or rather twenty-six, as the six- 
teenth of the series contains the congratula- 
tions and thanks which Quintus Cicero address- 
es to his brother on receiving the news that 
Tiro has received his freedom. As to Tiro," 
he writes, I protest, as I wish to see you, my 
dear Marcus, and my own son, and yours, and 
my dear TuUia, that you have done a thing 
that pleased me exceedingly in making a man 



264 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



who certainly was far above his mean condition 
a friend rather than a servant. Believe me, 
when I read your letters and his, I fairly leaped 
for joy ; I both thank and congratulate you. 
If the fidelity of my Statins gives me so much 
pleasure,' how valuable in Tiro must be this 
same good quality with the additional and even 
superior advantages of culture, wit, and polite- 
ness? I have many very good reasons for 
loving you ; and now there is this that you 
have told me, as indeed you were bound to 
tell me, this excellent piece of news. I saw all 
your heart in your letter." 

Cicero's letters to the invalid are at first very 
frequent. One is dated on the third, another 
on the fifth, and a third on the seventh of 
November ; and on the eighth of the month 
there are no fewer than three, the first of them 
apparently in answer to a letter from Tiro. " I 
am variously affected by your letter — much 
troubled by the first page, a little comforted by 
the second. The result is that I now say, 
without hesitation, till you are quite strong, do 
not trust yourself to travel either by land or 

' See page 277. 



A GO VERNOR IN HIS PRO VINCE. 265 



sea. I shall see you as soon as I wish if I see 
you quite restored." He goes on to criticise 
the doctor's prescriptions. Soup was not the 
right thing to give to a dyspeptic patient. 
Tiro is not to spare any expense. Another 
fee to the doctor might make him more atten- 
tive. In another letter he regrets that the 
invalid had felt himself compelled to accept an 
invitation to a concert, and tells him that he had 
left a horse and mule for him at Brundisium. 
Then, after a brief notice of public affairs, he 
returns to the question of the voyage. " I 
must again ask you not to be rash in your 
traveling. Sailors, I observe, make too much 
haste to increase their profits. Be cautious, 
my dear Tiro. You have a wide and danger- 
ous sea to traverse. If you can, come with 
Mescinius. He is wont to be careful in his 
voyages. If not with him, come with a person 
of distinction, who will have influence with the 
captain." In another letter he tells Tiro that 
he must revive his love of letters and learning. 
The physician thought that his mind was ill at 
ease ; for this the best remedy was occupation. 
In another he writes : "I have received your 



266 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



letter with its shaky handwriting; no wonder, 
indeed, seeing how serious has been your ill- 
ness. I send you ^gypta (probably a superior 
slave) to wait upon you, and a cook with him." 
Cicero could not have shown more affectionate 
care of a sick son. 

Tiro is said to have written a life of his 
master. And we certainly owe to his care the 
preservation of his correspondence. His weak 
health did not prevent him from living to the 
age of a hundred and three. 

Cicero pursued his homeward journey by 
slow stages, and it was not till November 25th 
that he reached Italy. His mind was dis- 
tracted between two anxieties — the danger of 
civil war, which he perceived to be daily 
growing more imminent, and an anxious desire 
to have his military successes over the Cilician 
mountaineers rewarded by the distinction of a 
triumph. The honor of a public thanksgiving 
had already been voted to him ; Cato, who 
opposed it on principle, having given him 
offense by so doing. A triumph was less easy 
to obtain, and indeed it seems to show a certain 
weakness in Cicero that he should have sought 



A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE. 267 



to obtain it for exploits of so very moderate a 
kind. However, he landed at Brundisium as 
a formal claimant for the honor. His lictors 
had their fasces (bundles of rods inclosing 
an ax) wreathed with bay leaves, as was 
the custom with the victorious general who 
hoped to obtain this distinction. Pompey, 
with whom he had a long interview, encouraged 
him to hope for it, and promised his support. 
It was not till January 4th that he reached th« 
capital. The look of affairs was growing 
darker and darker, but he still clung to the 
hopes of a triumph, and would not dismiss his 
lictors with their ornaments, though he was 
heartily wearied of their company. Things 
went so far that a proposition was actually 
made in the Senate that the triumph should be 
granted ; but the matter was postponed at the 
suggestion of one of the consuls, anxious, 
Cicero thinks, to make his own services more 
appreciated when the time should come. 
Before the end of January he seems to have 
given up his hopes. In a few more days he 
was fairly embarked on the tide of civil war. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



ATTICUS. 

The name of Atticus has been mentioned more 
than once in the preceding chapters as a corre- 
spondent of Cicero. We have indeed more 
than five hundred letters addressed to him, 
extending over a period of almost five-and- 
twenty years. There are frequent intervals of 
silence — not a single letter, for instance, belongs 
to the year of the consulship, the reason being 
that both the correspondents were in Rome. 
Sometimes, especially in the later years, they 
follow each other very closely. The last was 
written about a year before Cicero's death. 

Atticus was one of those rare characters who 
contrive to live at peace with all men. The 
times were troublous beyond all measure ; 
he had wealth and position ; he kept up close 
friendship with men who were in the very 



ATTICUS. 



269 



thickest of the fight ; he was ever ready with 
his sympathy and help for those who were 
vanquished ; and yet he contrived to arouse 
no enmities ; and after a life-long peace, inter- 
rupted only by one or two temporary alarms, 
died in a good old age. 

Atticus was of what we should call a gentle- 
man s family, and belonged by inheritance to 
the democratic party. But he early resolved 
to stand aloof from politics, and took an effec- 
tual means of carrying out his purpose by 
taking up his residence at Athens. With 
characteristic prudence he transferred the 
greater part of his property to investments in 
Greece. At Athens he became exceedingly 
popular. He lent money at easy rates to the 
municipality, and made liberal distributions of 
corn, giving as much as a bushel and a half to 
every needy citizen. He spoke Greek and 
Latin with equal ease and eloquence ; and had, 
we are told, an unsurpassed gift for reciting 
poetry. Sulla, who, for all his savagery, had a 
cultivated taste, was charmed with the young 
man, and would have taken him in his train. 

I beseech you," replied Atticus, don't take 



2 70 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

me to fight against those in whose company, 
but that I left Italy, I might be fighting against 
you/' After a residence of twenty-three years 
he returned to Rome, in the very year of 
Cicero's consulship. At Rome he stood as 
much aloof from the turmoil of civil strife as 
he had stood at Athens. Ofiice of every kind 
he steadily refused ; he was under no obliga- 
tions to any man, and therefore was not 
thought ungrateful by any. The partisans of 
Caesar and of Pompey were content to receive 
help from his purse, and to see him resolutely 
neutral. He refused to join in a project of 
presenting what we should call a testimonial 
to the murderers of Caesar on behalf of the 
order of the knights ; but he did not hesitate to 
relieve the necessities of the most conspicuous 
of them with a present of between three and 
four thousand pounds. When Antony was 
outlawed he protected his family ; and Antony 
in return secured his life and property amidst 
the horrors of the second Proscription. 

His biographer, Cornelius Nepos, has much 
to say of his moderation and temperate habits 
of life. He had no sumptuous country-house 



ATTIC us. 



271 



in the suburbs or at the sea-coast, but two 
farm-houses. He possessed, however, what 
seems to have been a very fine house (perhaps 
we should call it "castle," for Cicero speaks of 
it as a place capable of defense) in Epirus. It 
contained among other things a gallery of 
statues. A love of letters was one of his chief 
characteristics. His guests were not enter- 
tained with the performances of hired singers, 
but with readings from authors of repute. He 
had collected, indeed, a very large library. All 
his slaves, down to the very meanest, were 
well educated, and he employed them to make 
copies. 

Atticus married somewhat late in life. His 
only daughter was the first wife of Agrippa, 
the minister of Augustus, and his grand- 
daughter was married to Tiberius. Both of 
these ladies were divorced to make room for a 
consort of higher rank, who, curiously enough, 
was in both cases Julia, the infamous daughter 
of Augustus. Both, we may well believe, were 
regretted by their husbands. 

Atticus died at the age of seventy-seven. 
He was afflicted with a disease which he 



272 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 

believed to be incurable, and shortened his days 
by voluntary starvation. 

It was to this correspondent, then, that Cicero 
confided for about a quarter of a century his cares . 
and his wants. The two had been schoolfellows, 
and had probably renewed their acquaintance 
when Cicero visited Greece in search of health. 
Afterwards there came to be a family connec- 
tion between them, Atticus' sister, Pomponia, 
marrying Cicero's younger brother, Quintus, 
not much, we gather from the letters, to the 
happiness of either of them. Cicero could not 
have had a better confidant. He was full of 
sympathy, and ready with his help ; and he 
was at the same time sagacious and prudent in 
no common degree, an excellent man of busi- 
ness, and, thanks to the admirable coolness 
which enabled him to stand outside the turmoil 
of politics, an equally excellent adviser in 
politics. 

One frequent subject of Cicero's letters to 
his friend is money. I may perhaps express 
the relation between the two by saying that 
Atticus was Cicero's banker, though the phrase 
must not be taken too literally. He did not 




i 



ATTICUS. 



273 



habitually receive and pay money on Cicero's 
account, but he did so on occasions ; and he 
was constantly in the habit of making advances, 
though probably without interest, when tem- 
porary embarrassments, not infrequent, as we 
may gather from the letters, called for them. 
Atticus was himself a wealthy man. Like his 
contemporaries generally, he made an income 
by money-lending, and possibly, for the point 
is not quite clear, by letting out gladiators 
for hire. His biographer happens to give us 
the precise figure of his property. His words 
do not indeed expressly state whether the 
sum that he mentions means capital or in- 
come. I am inclined to think that it is the 
latter. If this be so, he had in early life 
an income of something less than eighteen 
thousand pounds, and afterwards nearly ninety 
thousand pounds. 

I may take this occasion to say something 
about Cicero's property, a matter which is, in its 
way, a rather perplexing question. In the case 
of a famous advocate among ourselves there 
would be no difficulty in understanding that he 
should have acquired a great fortune. But the 



2 74 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA OF CICERO. 



Roman law strictly forbade an advocate to re- 
ceive any payment from his clients. The practice 
of old times, when the great noble pleaded for 
the life or property of his humbler defendants, 
and was repaid by their attachment and support, 
still existed in theory. It exists indeed to this 
day, and accounts for the fact that a barrister 
among ourselves has no /^^^^/ means of recover- 
ing his fees. But a practice of paying counsel 
had begun to grow up. Some of Cicero's con- 
temporaries certainly received a large remune- 
ration for their services. Cicero himself always 
claims to have kept his hands clean in this 
respect, and as his enemies never brought any 
charge of this kind against him, his statement 
may very well be accepted. We have, then, to 
look for other sources of income. His patri- 
mony was considerable. It included, as we 
have seen, an estate at Arpinum and a house 
in Rome. And then he had numerous legacies. 
This is a source of income which is almost 
strange to our modern ways of acting and 
thinking. It seldom happens among us that 
a man of property leaves any thing outside the 
circle of his family. Sometimes an intimate 



AT TIC us. 



275 



friend will receive a legacy. But instances of 
money bequeathed to a statesman in recog- 
nition of his services, or a literary man in 
recognition of his eminence, are exceedingly 
rare. In Rome they were very common. 
Cicero declares, giving it as a proof of the 
way in which he had been appreciated by his 
fellow-citizens, that he had received two hun- 
dred thousand pounds in legacies. This was 
in the last year of his life. This does some- 
thing to help us out of our difficulty. Only 
we must remember that it could hardly have 
been till somewhat late in his career that these 
recognitions of his services to the State and 
to his friends began to fall in. He made 
about twenty thousand pounds out of his 
year's government of his province, but it is 
probable that this money was lost. Then, 
again, he was elected into the College of 
Augurs (this was in his fifty-fourth year). 
These religious colleges were very rich. Their 
banquets were proverbial for their splendor. 
Whether the individual members derived any 
benefit from their revenues we do not know. 
We often find him complaining of debt ; but 



2 76 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



he always speaks of it as a temporary Inconve- 
nience rather than as a permanent burden. It 
does not oppress him ; he can always find 
spirits enough to laugh at it. When he buys 
his great town mansion on the Palatine Hill 
(it had belonged to the wealthy Crassus), for 
thirty thousand pounds, he says, I now owe 
so much that I should be glad to conspire if 
any body would accept me as an accomplice." 
But this is not the way in which a man who 
did not see his way out of his difficulties would 
speak. 

Domestic affairs furnish a frequent topic. 
He gives accounts of the health of his wife ; 
he announces the birth of his children. In 
after years he sends the news when his daughter 
is betrothed and when she is married, and tells 
of the doings and prospects of his son. 'He 
has also a good deal to say about his brother s 
household, which, as I have said before, was 
not very happy. Here is a scene of their 
domestic life. ''When I reached Arpinum, 
my brother came to me. First we had much 
talk about you ; afterwards we came to the 
subject which you and I had discussed at 



AT TIC us. 



277 



Tusculum. I never saw any thing so gentle, 
so kind as my brother was in speaking of your 
sister. If there had been any ground for their 
disagreement, there was nothing to notice. So 
much for that day. On the morrow we left 
for Arpinum. Quintus had to remain in the 
Retreat ; I was going to stay at Aquinum. Still 
we lunched at the Retreat (you know the place). 
When we arrived Quintus said in the politest 
way, ' Pomponia, ask the ladies in ; I will call 
the servants,' Nothing could — so at least I 
thought — have been more pleasantly said, not 
only as far as words go, but in tone and look. 
However, she answered before us all, ' I am 
myself but a stranger here.' This, I fancy, 
was because Statins had gone on in advance 
to see after the lunch. ' See,' said Quintus, 
' this is what I have to put up with every day.' 
Perhaps you will say, ' What was there in this ?' 
It was really serious, so serious as to disturb 
me much, so unreasonably, so angrily did she 
speak and look. I did not show it, but I was 
greatly vexed. We all sat down to table, all, 
that is, but her. However, Quintus sent her 
something from the table. She refused it. 



278 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



Not to make a long story of it, no one could 
have been more gentle than my brother, and 
no one more exasperating than your sister — in 
my judgment at least, and I pass by many other 
things which offended me more than they did 
Quintus. I went on to Aquinum/' (The lady's 
behavior was all the more blameworthy be- 
cause her husband was on his way to a re- 
mote province.) Quintus remained at the 
Retreat. The next day he joined me at Arpi- 
num. Your sister, he told me, would have 
nothing to do with him, and up to the moment 
of her departure was just in the same mood in 
which I had seen her.'' 

Another specimen of letters touching on a 
more agreeable topic may interest my readers. 
It is a hearty invitation. 

To my delight, Cincius " (he was Atticus' 
agent) ''came to me between daylight on Jan- 
uary 30th, with the news that you were in Italy, 
He was sending, he said, messengers to you, 
I did not like them to go without a letter from 
me, not that I had any thing to write to you, 
especially when you were so close, but that I 
wished you to understand with what delight I 



ATTICUS. 



279 



anticipate your coming. . . . The day you arrive 
come to my house with all your party. You 
will find that Tyrannio" (a Greek man of letters) 
''has arranged my books marvelously well. 
What remains of them is much more satisfac- 
tory than I thought.^ I should be glad if you 
would send me two of your library clerks, for 
Tullius to employ as binders and helpers in 
general ; give some orders too to take some 
parchment for indices. All this, however, if it 
suits your convenience. Any how,come yourself 
and bring Pilia^ with you. That is but right. 
TuUia too wishes it." 

' They had suffered with the rest of Cicero's property 
at the time of his exile. 
• Pilia was the lady to whom Atticus was engaged 



CHAPTER XV, 



ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS. 

There were some things in which Mark 
Antony resembled C^sar. At the time it 
seemed probable that he would play the same 
part, and even climb to the same height of 
power. He failed in the end because he wanted 
the power of managing others, and, still more, 
of controlling himself. He came of a good 
stock. His grandfather had been one of the 
greatest orators of his day, his father was a 
kindly, generous man, his mother a kinsv/oman 
of Csesar, a matron of . the best Roman type. 
But he seemed little likely to do credit to his 
belongings. His riotous life became conspicu- 
ous even in a city where extravagance and vice 
were only too common, and his debts, though 
not so enormous as Csesar s, were greater, says 
Plutarch, than became his youth, for they 



Marcus Antonius. 



I 



ANTON V AND AUGUSTUS, 281 

amounted to about fifty thousand pounds. He 
was taken away from these dissipations by 
miHtary service in the East, and he rapidly ac- 
quired considerable reputation as a soldier. 
Here is the picture that Plutarch draws of him : 
There was something noble and dignified 
in his appearance. His handsome beard, his 
broad forehead, his aquiline nose, gave him a 
manly look that resembled the familiar statues 
and pictures of Hercules. There was indeed a 
legend that the Antonii were descended from 
a son of Hercules ; and this he was anxious to 
support by his appearance and dress. When- 
ever he appeared in public he had his tunic 
gired up to the hip, carried a great sword at his 
side, and wore a rough cloak of Cilician hair. 
The habits too that seemed vulgar to others — 
his boastfulness, his coarse humor, his drink- 
ing bouts, the way he had of eating in public, 
taking his meals as he stood from the soldiers' 
tables — had an astonishing effect in making 
him popular with the soldiers. His bounty too, 
the help which he gave with a liberal hand to 
comrades and friends, made his way to power 
easy. On one occasion he directed that a pres- 



282 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



ent of three thousand pounds should be given 
to a friend. His steward, aghast at the magni- 
tude of the sum, thought to bring it home to 
his master s mind by putting the actual coin 
on a table. What is this ? said Antony, as 
he happened to pass by. The money you bade 
me pay over,'' was the man's reply. Why, I 
had thought it would be ten times as much as 
this. This is but a trifle. Add to it as much 
more." 

When the civil war broke out, Antony joined 
the party of Caesar, who, knowing his popular- 
ity with the troops, made him his second in com- 
mand. He did good service at Pharsalia, and 
while his chief went on to Egypt, returned to 
Rome as his representative. There were after- 
wards differences between the two ; Caesar was 
offended at the open scandal of Antony's man- 
ners and found him a troublesome adherent ; 
Antony conceived himself to be insufficiently 
rewarded for his services,especially when he was 
called upon to pay for Pompey's confiscated 
property, which he had bought. Their close 
alliance, however, had been renewed before 
Caesar's death. That event made him the first 



ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS. 283 



man in Rome. The chief instrument of his 
power was a strange one ; the Senate, seeing 
that the people of Rome loved and admired 
the dead man, passed a resolution that all the 
wishes which Caesar had left in writing should 
have the force of law— and Antony had the 
custody of his papers. People laughed, and 
called the documents " Letters from the Styx." 
There was the gravest suspicion that many of 
them were forged. But for a time they were 
a very powerful machinery for effecting his 
purpose. 

Then came a check. Cesar's nephew and 
heir, Octavius, arrived at Rome. Born in the 
year of Cicero's consulship, he was little more 
than nineteen ; but in prudence, statecraft, and 
knowledge of the world he was fully grown. 
In his twelfth year he had delivered the funeral 
oration over his grandmother Julia. After 
winning some distinction as a soldier in Spam, 
he had returned at his uncle's bidding to Apol- 
lonia, a town of the eastern coast of the Adriat- 
ic, where he studied letters and philosophy un- 
der Greek teachers. Here he had received the 
title of "Master of the Horse," an honor which 



284 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



gave him the rank next to the Dictator him- 
self. He came to Rome with the purpose, as 
he declared, of claiming his inheritance and 
avenging his uncle's death. But he knew how 
to abide his time. He kept on terms with An- 
tony, who had usurped his position and appro- 
priated his inheritance, and he was friendly, if 
not with the actual murderers of Caesar, yet 
certainly with Cicero, who made no secret of 
having approved their deed. 

For Cicero also had now returned to public 
life. For some time past, both before Caesar s 
death and after it, he had devoted himself to 
literature.^ Now there seemed to him a chance 
that something might yet be done for the re- 
public, and he returned to Rome, which he 
reached on the last day of August. The next 
day there was a meeting of the Senate, at 
which Antony was to propose certain honors 
to Caesar. Cicero, wearied, or affecting to be 
wearied, by his journey, was absent, and was 
fiercely attacked by Antony, who threatened to 
send workmen to dig him out of his house. 

' To the years 46-44 belong nearly all his treatises on 
rhetoric and philosophy. 



ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS. 



285 



The next day Cicero was in his place, Antony 
being absent, and made a dignified defense of 
his conduct, and criticised with some severity 
the proceedings of his assailant. Still so far 
there was no irreconcilable breach between the 
two men. " Change your course," says the 
orator, " I beseech you : think of those who 
have gone before, and so steer the course of 
the Commonwealth that your countrymen may 
rejoice that you were born. Without this no 
man can be happy or famous." He still be- 
lieved, or professed to believe, that Antony 
was capable of patriotism. If he had any 
hopes of peace, these were soon to be crushed. 
After a fortnight or more spent in preparation, 
assisted, we are told, by a professional teacher 
of eloquence, Antony came down to the Senate 
and delivered a savage invective against Cicero, 
The object of his attack was again absent. 
He had wished to attend the meeting, but his 
friends hindered him, fearing, not without 
reason, actual violence from the armed attend- 
ants whom Antony was accustomed to bring 
into the senate-house. 

The attack was answered in the famous 



286 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



oration which is called the second Philippic.^ 
If I could transcribe this speech (which, for 
other reasons besides its length, I cannot do) 
it would give us a strange picture of " Roman 
Life." It is almost incredible that a man so 
shameless and so vile should have been the 
greatest power in a state still nominally free. 
I shall give one extract from it. Cicero has 
been speaking of Antony's purchase of Pom- 
pey's confiscated property. He was wild with 
joy, like a character in a farce ; a beggar one 
day, a millionaire the next. But, as some 
writer says, '111 gotten, ill kept.' It is beyond 
belief, it is an absolute miracle, how he squan- 
dered this vast property — in a few months do 
I say ? — no, in a few days. There was a great 
cellar of wine, a very great quantity ofexcellent 
plate, costly stuffs, plenty of elegant and even 
splendid furniture, just as one might expect in 
a man who was affluent without being luxu- 
rious. And of all this within a few days there 

* The orations against Antony — there are fourteen of 
them — are called "Philippics," a name transferred to them 
from the great speeches in which Demosthenes attacked 
Philip of Macedon. The name seems to have been in 
common use in Juvenal's time {circa no a.d.) 



ANTONY AND A UG USTUS. 287 

was left nothing. Was there ever a Charybdis 
so devouring ? A Charybdis, do I say ? no— if 
there ever was such a thing, it was but a single 
animal. Good heavens ! I can scarcely believe 
that the whole ocean could have swallowed up 
so quickly possessions so numerous, so scat- 
tered, and lying at places so distant. Nothing 
was locked up, nothing sealed, nothing cata- 
logued. Whole store-rooms were made a 
present of to the vilest creatures. Actors and 
actresses of burlesque were busy each with 
plunder of their own. The mansion was full 
of dice players and drunkards. There was 
drinking from morning to night, and that in 
many places. His losses at dice (for even he 
is not always lucky) kept mounting up. In 
the chambers of slaves you might see on the 
beds the purple coverlets which had belonged 
to the great Pompey. No wonder that all this 
wealth was spent so quickly. Reckless men so 
abandoned might well have speedily devoured, 
not only the patrimony of a single citizen, how- 
ever ample — and ample it was — but whole 
cities and kingdoms." 

The speech was never delivered but cir 



288 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO. 



culated in writing. Toward the end of 44, 
Antony, who found the army deserting him for 
the young Octavius, left Rome, and hastened 
into northern Italy, to attack Decimus Brutus. 
Brutus was not strong enough to venture on 
a battle with him, and shut himself up in Mu- 
tina. Cicero continued to take the leading 
part in affairs at Rome, delivering the third 
and fourth Philippics in December, 44, and the 
ten others during the five months of the follow- 
ing year. The fourteenth was spoken in the 
Senate, when the fortunes of the falling re- 
public seem to have revived. A great battle 
had been fought at Mutina, in which Antony 
had been completely defeated ; and Cicero pro- 
posed thanks to the commanders and troops, 
and honors to those who had fallen. 

The joy with which these tidings had been 
received was but very brief. Of the three 
generals named in the vote of thanks the two 
who had been loyal to the republic were dead ; 
the third, the young Octavius, had found the 
opportunity for which he had been waiting of 
betraying it. The soldiers were ready to do 
his bidding, and he resolved to seize by their 



OcTAVius C-^SAR Augustus. 



ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS. 



289 



help the inheritance of power which his uncle 
had left him. Antony had fled across the Alps, 
and had been received by Lepidus, who was in 
command of a large army in that province, 
Lepidus resolved to play the part which Crassus 
had played sixteen years before. He brought 
about a reconciliation between Octavius and 
Antony, as Crassus had reconciled Pompey and 
Cffisar, and was himself admitted as a third 
into their alliance. Thus was formed the Second 
Triumvirate. 

The three chiefs who had agreed to divide 
the Roman world between them met on a little 
island near Bononia (the modern Bonogna) and 
discussed their plans. Three days were given 
to their consultations, the chief subject being 
the catalogue of enemies, public and private, 
who were to be destroyed. Each had a list of 
his own ; and on Antony's the first name was 
Cicero. Lepidus assented, as he was ready to 
assent to all the demands of his more resolute ^ 
colleagues ; but the young Octavius is said to 
have long resisted, and to have given way only 
on the last day. A list of between two^ and 
three thousand names of senators and knights 



290 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA YS OF CICERO, 



was drawn up. Seventeen were singled out 
for instant execution, and among these seven^ 
teen was Cicero. He was staying at his home 
in Tusculum with his brother Quintus when the 
news reached him. His first impulse was to 
make for the sea-coast. If he could . reach 
Macedonia, where Brutus had a powerful army, 
he would, for a time at least, be safe. The two 
brothers started. But Quintus had little or 
nothing with him, and was obliged to go home 
to fetch some money. Cicero, who was himself 
but ill provided, pursued his journey alone. 
Reaching the coast, he embarked. When it 
came to the point of leaving Italy his resolution 
failed him. He had always felt the greatest 
aversion for camp life. He had had an odious 
experience of it when Pompey was struggling 
with Caesar for the mastery. He would sooner 
die, bethought, than make trial of it again. He 
landed, and traveled twelve miles towards 
Rome. Some afterwards said that he still 
cherished hopes of being protected by An- 
tony ; others that it was his purpose to make 
his way into the house of Octavius and kill 
himself on his hearth, cursing him with his last 



ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS, 



291 



breath, but that he was deterred by the fear of 
being seized and tortured. Any how, he turned 
back, and allowed his slaves to take him to 
Capua. The plan of taking refuge with Brutus 
was probably urged upon him by his com- 
panions, who felt that this gave the only chance 
of their own escape. Again he embarked, and 
again he landed. Plutarch tells a strange story 
of a flock of ravens that settled on the yardarms 
of his ship while he was on board, and on the 
windows of the villa in which he passed the 
night. One bird, he says, flew upon his couch 
and pecked at the cloak in which he had wrapped 
himself. His slaves reproached themselves at 
allowing a master, whom the very animals were 
thus seeking to help, to perish before their eyes. 
Almost by main force they put him into his 
litter and carried him toward the coast. An- 
tony s soldiers now reached the villa, the officer 
in command being an old client whom Cicero 
had successfully defended on a charge of mur- 
der. They found the doors shut and burst 
them open. The inmates denied all knowledge 
of their masters movements, till a young 
Greek, one of his brother s freedmen, whom 



/ 

^92 ROMAN LIFE IN THE DA VS OF CICEm ^ ^ ^ 



Cicero had taken a pleasure in teaching, showed 
th« officer the litter which was being carried 
through the shrubbery of the villa to the sea 
Tabng with him some of his men, he hastened 
to follow. Cicero, hearing their steps, bade 
he bearers set the litter on the ground. He 
looked out, and stroking his chin with his left 
hand, as his habit was, looked steadfastly at 
the murderers. His face was pale and worn 
with care. The officer struck him on the neck 
with his sword, some of the rough soldiers 
turning away while the deed was done The 
head and hands were cut off by order of An- 
tony, and nailed up in the Forum. 

Many years afterwards the Emperor Augus- 
tus (the Octavius of this chapter), coming unex- 
pectedly upon one of his grandsons, saw the lad 
seek to hide in his robe a volume which he had 
been reading. He took it, and found it to be 
one of the treatises of Cicero. He returned it 
with words which I would here repeat • " He 
was a good man and a lover of his country " 



THE END. 



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